The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) pointed to a jump in operator adoption and trials of open infrastructure technology over the last nine months, with companies across the globe assessing the switch away from traditional network kit.
During the TIP Insights Series Global event, Vodafone head of group network architecture and TIP chairman Yago Tenorio said current deployments were only the “tip of the iceberg,” with trials and limited deployments underway across a wide number of markets.
At TIP’s latest update in February the industry group noted open architecture was in use at divisions of Vodafone, Telefonica and Etisalat in addition to Japan’s Rakuten and Chilean operator Mundo.
As of today (6 October) Tenorio said the map of commercial deployments for open RAN and open transport deployments was “significantly denser despite this difficult period [the Covid-19 pandemic]”.
New commercial deployments over the nine months include US operator Dish, Bharti Airtel’s India unit and Taiwan’s Asia Pacific Telecom. The industry group also listed a number of large operator groups with trials or lab tests underway including MTN, Vodacom, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia and Indosat Ooredoo.
Vodafone RFI
[1]During the session, Tenorio also revealed the results of a Vodafone RFI assessing open RAN radio hardware suppliers and products available for deployments during 2021. Among the companies named by the executive were Mavenir, Comba, NTS, NEC and Fujitsu (see image left, click to enlarge).
Elsewhere during the varied opening keynote, TIP unveiled two new community labs, one in Indonesia and another in Los Angeles, USA, charged with continuing to develop open infrastructure solutions.
And TIP announced it is is putting all its RAN work (2G through to 5G) into one Project Group – with subgroups for OpenRAN components (for example white box RU, DU-CU).
A number of operator executives then took to the virtual stage to share their organisations’ progress, including Bharti Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon, who pointed to the high potential of open infrastructure in 5G – the technology where he believes “the prize is the highest”.
[1] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/rfi-results.jpg
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