UK operator Virgin Media O2 activated open RAN technology in macro sites in its network in the Northamptonshire region. The operator worked on the multi-vendor open RAN deployment with NEC and Rakuten Symphony and is using its existing telco cloud supply chain. Virgin Media O2 said that these open RAN sites in its network are able to handle commercial traffic.
This commercial deployment comes after the three companies conducted an open RAN lab trial last year in which Virgin Media O2 used NEC for systems integration, and Rakuten Symphony provided the open RAN software, edge cloud and radio management and operations system.
“The successful activation of Virgin Media O2’s first UK macro-sites demonstrates the potential of the multi-vendor Open RAN model,” said Jeanie York, CTO at Virgin Media O2 in a statement.
This commercial deployment comes just one year after Rakuten announced it was creating the Rakuten Symphony business unit to sell its innovations in open RAN, OSS/BSS automation and other functions to other telco operators.
In the U.S. market, Dish Network has said that it will use Rakuten Symphony as an OSS vendor for its cloud-native 5G standalone network. Specifically, Dish said that it is using Rakuten Symphony’s observability framework to collect telemetry data from network functions that enable the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize and operate the 5G network.
Dish also is using Altiostar’s open RAN software, which Rakuten acquired last year and is now part of Symphony’s network functions offering.