Orange and Vodafone have agreed to jointly build Open RAN (radio access network) infrastructure across rural parts of Europe, through sharing RAN capabilities.
Open RAN sees telcos and other communications service providers (CSPs) build disaggregated mobile networks using hardware and software from different providers, instead of relying on complete proprietary systems from the likes of Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Huawei. This is designed to make the builds cheaper.
This is said to be the first time that two companies have agreed to share Open RAN networks in Europe.
The first commercial sites to be deployed under the agreement are planned to start this year in a rural area of Romania, near Bucharest. They will provide an initial “real-life experience” of the operational model, based on the integration of multi-vendor hardware and software.
This will pave the way for wider scale deployments. Orange and Vodafone are currently selecting strategic vendors for the initial build phase.
The companies’ commitment to Open RAN is also said to support the European Commission’s “ambitious target” to have 5G in all populated areas by 2030.
“By using open and virtualised RANs, relying on disaggregated software and hardware, Vodafone and Orange will each have greater flexibility when adding new radio sites or upgrading existing ones, while keeping the cost and energy consumption low,” the partners said.
Testing on the new networks will continue throughout the year, they said.
