Vodafone switches on UK's first live 5G OpenRAN site

News Wireless United Kingdom 19 JAN 2022
Vodafone switches on UK's first live 5G OpenRAN site

Vodafone has switched on the UK's first OpenRAN site to carry live 5G traffic. The site in Bath is the first of 2,500 5G and 4G OpenRAN sites planned by Vodafone in the UK.

The new OpenRAN site has been delivered with partners Samsung, Wind River, Intel, Dell, Capgemini Engineering ad Keysight Technologies. To mark the milestone, Vodafone UK's Chief Network Office, Andrea Donna, made the first 5G video call over OpenRAN infrastructure to Julia Lopez, Digital Infrastructure Minister, on 11 January. 

This first site installation (FSI) includes deployment of the following OpenRAN-compliant technology - Samsung vRAN solutions; Dell Common Off The Shelf (COTS) servers; Intel technology including Xeon processors; and Wind River Studio for managing containerised Open RAN CU/DU workloads. Keysight and Capgemini have provided integration and testing services. Open RAN 4G and 5G antennas from Samsung and NEC will be deployed from mid-2022. 

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