The Telecom Infra Project announced a reorganisation of its work on open RAN standards. The OpenRAN and OpenRAN 5G NR Project Groups will be consolidated into a single OpenRAN Project Group with various sub-groups. The new project group will be chaired by Vodafone and T-Mobile US, and different work streams will be co-led by BT, China Unicom, Ooredoo, Smartfren, TPG, Intel and Vodafone Idea.
Several new sub-groups have been created based on mobile operators’ priorities and market demand. These are broadly categorized as component subgroups and segment subgroups. Each subgroup will have key deliverables spanning across the full lifecycle – from ideation to commercial deployment. They will aggregate MNO demand, develop common requirements, align vendor roadmaps, lower integration cost and risks, deliver easy to consume deployment and operational guidelines and facilitate adoption and proliferation of OpenRAN solutions, TIP said in a statement.
OpenRAN demand growing
OpenRAN trials are underway in multiple markets around the work. In addition to simplifying 5G roll-outs, the development work has taken on a new impetus since the adoption of tightened security regulations on RAN suppliers in several countries. The TIP members expect demand to accelerate in the next year. A recent Analysys Mason survey of 60 MNOs around the world found that a third of tier-1 MNOs and over half of tier-2 MNOs expect to start rolling out OpenRAN commercially by 2023.
Vodafone has been one of the key players in the space, working with Parallel Wireless on trials in Turkey, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ireland. Vodafone is also advancing trials with Mavenir in Mozambique and the UK, and Parallel Wireless is providing OpenRAN prdocuts for Inland Cellular’s 4G coverage, the first deployment of OpenRAN in the US.
Vodafone has announced the results of its RFI for a 4G/5G RU to evaluate the OpenRAN ecosystem's readiness for commercial deployments. The operator plans to start OpenRAN deployments in Europe in early 2021. The RFI invited OpenRAN RRH (Remote Radio Head) and MaMIMO (Massive Multiple-Input Multiple Output) vendors to submit products.
New Evenstar RRU in Q1 2021
Vodafone, Airtel and Deutsche Telekom along with technology partners AceAxis, Altiostar, Baicells, Facebook, Flex, Mavenir, MTI, Parallel Wireless and Xilinx with its ZYNQ & RFSOC platforms are working together on the Evenstar RRU (Remote Radio Unit). Vodafone confirmed the completion of the lab validation of the first generation of the Evenstar RRU product (aka Step-0), led by Mavenir in partnership with MTI and Facebook. The partners are working towards validation in a field pilot, and the second generation Evenstar RRU (aka Step-1) is on track for availability in Q2 2021.
