Telecom Italia (TIM) said it has become the first operator in Italy and one of the first in Europe to begin deploying Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) infrastructure on its mobile network. The first city in Italy to adopt the open network model is Faenza in the Emilia-Romagna region, where the operator has started to collaborate with longtime partner JMA Wireless to implement a system that decouples the components (hardware and software) of the radio access network with a view to fostering a broader industrial ecosystem.
TIM said the radio node on the 4G network being deployed in Faenza has been built by combining JMA’s software baseband with the radio units provided by Microelectronics Technology (MTI). In the future, the venture will also extend to 5G networks, added the operator.
The rollout comes a couple of months after TIM joined the alliance launched in January by Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone to work together on developing and implementing open RANs for mobile. TIM said it signed up to the MoU to commit to the development of innovative mobile network systems that use open virtualised architecture to facilitate increasingly agile, flexible, secure and functional 5G services.
