Open RAN Revolution: Vodafone and Nokia Lead Italy’s Digital Autonomy Drive

Open RAN Revolution: Vodafone and Nokia Lead Italy’s Digital Autonomy Drive

(IN BRIEF) Vodafone and Nokia have announced plans to launch Italy’s first commercial 5G Open Radio Access Network (RAN) pilot, signaling a strengthening of their partnership. This initiative aims to create an open platform for independent software providers, startups, and local companies, fostering competition and innovation while enhancing Europe’s digital autonomy. The pilot project, located in northern Italy, will feature Nokia’s containerized baseband software, hosted on Dell PowerEdge XR8000 servers designed for Open RAN and edge computing. The collaboration’s main goal is to prove the functionality and performance of Nokia’s Open RAN solution compared to traditional RAN systems. This initiative aligns with Vodafone’s broader strategy to deploy Open RAN technology extensively across Europe and aims to have 30% of its network based on Open RAN by 2030.

(PRESS RELEASE) BERKSHIRE, 9-Oct-2023 — /EuropaWire/ —  Vodafone (LON: VOD), a British multinational leader in technology communications, and Nokia have announced an exciting expansion of their partnership with plans to conduct the first commercial 5G Open Radio Access Network (RAN) pilot in Italy, strengthening Europe’s position in software-based networks.

By combining the expertise of Nokia, one of the world’s leading RAN providers, and Vodafone’s extensive pan-European network, this collaboration aims to create an open platform that welcomes independent software providers, startups, and local businesses to utilize open APIs. This move will stimulate competition and innovation, bolstering Europe’s competitiveness and granting it increased digital autonomy, supported by a more robust supply chain.

The pilot project will encompass a cluster of sites in northern Italy and feature Nokia’s containerized baseband software running on Red Hat OpenShift, an industry-leading hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes. It will be hosted on the latest generation Dell PowerEdge XR8000 servers, specifically designed for Open RAN and mobile edge computing workloads. These Dell PowerEdge servers will incorporate a Smart Network Interface Card (NIC) for Layer 1 processing, a collaborative development effort between Nokia and Marvell.

The primary objective of this collaboration is to demonstrate that Nokia’s Open RAN solution achieves functionality and performance on par with purpose-built RAN systems. The deployment will also include the validation of Open RAN-compliant Open Fronthaul interfaces, encompassing antennas and baseband units.

Alberto Ripepi, Chief Network Officer, Vodafone, said: “Today’s announcement reinforces Vodafone’s commitment to supporting the EU digital economy with the deployment of customer-focussed Open RAN networks. Through greater collaboration, Vodafone and Nokia will also foster a new developer ecosystem in our home markets by providing a live software-based open network on which to launch innovative products and services for our customers.”

“Nokia’s collaborative anyRAN approach means that Communication Service Providers (CSPs) can deploy Cloud RAN with the server hardware and CaaS layer of their choice. Together with our ecosystem partners, we are committed to providing more choice and a higher performance in Open RAN solutions to our customers than they will see from other RAN suppliers,” commented Mark Atkinson, Head of Radio Access Networks at Nokia.

This pioneering Open RAN deployment marks a significant milestone in Italy and underscores the joint vision of Vodafone and Nokia to create a fully automated and programmable network capable of swift responses to customer demands. The partners are now focusing on constructing open and interoperable networks to meet the growing demand for highly responsive 5G services driven by AI and extended reality.

Shlomi Moscovici, VP of Telco, Media and Entertainment, EMEA, Red Hat, said: “Open RAN’s significance lies not only in providing an efficient and flexible way to deploy applications and derive value at the edge, but also in helping boost collaboration and innovation in the ecosystem. Vodafone’s 5G Open RAN pilot is a leading example of collaboration in action, and we are pleased to bring Red Hat OpenShift as an interoperable, consistent and scalable foundation for Open RAN.”

“Through our ongoing collaboration with Nokia and Red Hat, we’re providing an open infrastructure platform to Vodafone that enables network innovation and new service delivery,” said Dennis Hoffman, senior vice president and general manager, Telecom Systems Business, Dell Technologies.

“Marvell is pleased to collaborate with Nokia and the broader Cloud-RAN ecosystem to deliver scalable wireless RAN baseband silicon solutions for the emerging AI-era. Cloud-optimised silicon is critical to delivering scalable system performance with efficient power and cost as cloud and RAN technologies converge to provide feature and performance parity to traditional RAN solutions,” said Will Chu, senior VP and GM, Compute & Custom Business Unit, Marvell.

This initiative aligns with Vodafone’s broader strategy to extensively implement Open RAN technology across Europe, with the goal of having 30% of its network infrastructure based on this technology by 2030. It builds upon Vodafone’s recent announcement of deploying 2500 Open RAN sites in the UK, marking the largest-scale deployment of its kind in Europe. Together, these efforts will promote the adoption of disaggregated and automated solutions, providing the agility to swiftly embrace innovative developments, with Open RAN as the preferred technology of choice.

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About Vodafone

Vodafone is the largest pan-European and African telecoms company. Our purpose is to connect for a better future by using technology to improve lives, digitalise critical sectors and enable inclusive and sustainable digital societies.

We provide mobile and fixed services to over 300 million customers in 17 countries, partner with mobile networks in 46 more and are also a world leader in the Internet of Things (IoT), connecting over 167 million devices and platforms. With Vodacom Financial Services and M-Pesa, the largest financial technology platform in Africa, we serve more than 71 million people across seven countries.

We are committed to reducing our environmental impact to reach net zero emissions by 2040, while helping our customers reduce their own carbon emissions by 350 million tonnes by 2030. We are driving action to reduce device waste and achieve our target to reuse, resell or recycle 100% of our network waste by 2025.

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SOURCE: VODAFONE