Telefónica and partners develop Open RAN

Telefónica is planning 4G and 5G Open RAN trials in UK, Germany, Spain and Brazil this year. The carrier has announced an agreement to develop Open RAN solutions with Altiostar, Gigatera Communications, Intel, Supermicro and Xilinx.

The companies are collaborating on the design, development, optimization, testing and industrialization of Open RAN technologies across its footprint this year. Open RAN represents a paradigm change in network technology where radio baseband hardware is based on standard servers, interfaces between network equipment are open and standardized by the O-RAN Alliance, and the baseband software runs in the Telco Cloud by adopting the Automation and Zero-Touch capabilities that the NFV/SDN paradigm can bring.

The collaboration focuses on the appropriate Distributed Units (DUs) that implement part of the baseband radio functions using the FlexRAN software reference platform and Intel® Xeon® processor based servers, appropriate Remote Radio Units (RRUs) connected through open interfaces based on O-RAN fronthaul specification, and suitable Software that manages the connectivity in an open Cloud RAN architecture.

"Telefónica is known for its leading-edge network and has been championing open vRAN implementations to bring greater network service agility and flexibility,” said Pierre Kahhale, Altiostar Vice President of Field Operations. “By bringing together the best-of-breed innovation, Telefonica is looking to achieve this vision into their network. We look forward to supporting this transformation of Telefonica’s network.”

“Gigatera Communications and Telefonica has been actively working to ensure state of the art technologies are being deployed.  We truly value our partnership as we engage and revolutionize the industry.”, Daniel Kim, President.

“Open RAN offers a way for service providers to enhance customer experiences and enable new revenue-generating applications,” said Dan Rodriguez, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Network Platforms Group.  “We are collaborating closely with Telefonica and the broader ecosystem, and also participating in initiatives like the O-RAN Alliance, to help accelerate innovation in the industry.”