In the bustling realm of telecommunications, Swedish kit vendor Ericsson has recently released a cluster of Open RAN and Cloud RAN announcements in rapid succession. The most noteworthy among these appears to be a crucial collaboration with Spanish operator Telefónica.
Ericsson and Telefónica have inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a key objective to expedite the embrace of an increasingly open network architecture underpinned by Ericsson’s Cloud RAN technology. This essentially translates to a progression of joint Cloud RAN trial deployments across Europe.
Both firms are determined to explore avenues for deploying Cloud RAN sites with a heavy emphasis on automation, including rApps deployment in RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) and service management and orchestration (SMO) architectures, thus expanding radio access network (RAN) solutions. Additionally, Ericsson’s Cloud RAN promises operators exciting possibilities to cultivate both macro networks and enterprise applications.
Citing the monumental collaboration, Enrique Blanco, Telefónica Global CTIO, remarked, “This collaboration brings together the best of both organizations, enabling us to leverage the latest advancements in virtualization and cloud technologies.” Also asserting the significance of the development, Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks, Ericsson said, “The latest development in O-RAN Alliance allows us to build high-performance networks on Open RAN standards, at scale.”
Adding to their list of achievements, Ericsson purports it has successfully deployed more than a million radios that are hardware-ready for the ‘next generation of open fronthaul technology’. With the new radio platforms launched this year, Ericsson asserts a comprehensive Open RAN offering across its Massive MIMO and remote radio portfolios. Starting from next year, they will introduce support for open fronthaul across their Cloud RAN and radio portfolios.
Ericsson’s enthusiasm in the Open RAN and Cloud RAN sectors is evident. It is intent on marking its presence and engages in consistent activities aligned to these technologies. Recently, the company announced its collaboration with Google to bring hyperscale benefits to telco cloud with an adaptation of its Cloud RAN solution that operates on Google Distributed Cloud (GDC).
Moreover, Ericsson collaborated with operator O2 Telefónica to develop a proof of concept showcasing Cloud RAN and mmWave technology. This demo, carried out at O2 Telefónica’s Wayra innovation hub in Munich, is believed to be Europe’s inaugural Cloud RAN 5G mmWave use case demonstration. Among its milestones, Ericsson also takes pride as the first vendor to execute an end-to-end Cloud RAN call using the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost.
