- Open RAN is a strategic priority for Vodafone
- The group is confident about its progress to date
- Collaboration between operators and vendors will be key going forward
Make no mistake: Vodafone is as keen as ever about open Radio Access Network (RAN) technology despite the departure of Santiago “Yago” Tenorio, who recently joined Verizon as CTO.
Under the guidance of Tenorio and other key Vodafone executives such as Andrea Dona, chief network officer with Vodafone UK, and Francisco (Paco) Martín Pignatelli, head of open RAN at Vodafone, Vodafone became a leading proponent of open RAN over recent years.
That's not going to change, according to Devang Solanky, RAN product manager at Vodafone and co-chair of the Open RAN project group at Telecom Infra Project (TIP). Solanky reiterated during a panel session at Telecoms Europe’s Telco to Techco event this week that open RAN remains a strategic priority for the group.
Picking up from where Tenorio left off, Solanky emphasized that Vodafone continues to move toward its aim of having 30% of its network in Europe based on the technology by 2030, claiming that Vodafone has “come far” in its open RAN journey.
Referring in particular to the deployment of a commercial-grade open RAN network in the U.K., he said Vodafone is “very happy with the performance of the sites that are there, which are taking commercial traffic.”
“We have a variety of configurations across 4G low bands, 4G mid bands, 5G mid bands, and 5G massive MIMO. We are happy with the KPIs on all the layers, be it about the call setup success ratio or drop call ratio, or even downlink-uplink throughputs across 4G and 5G layers. So open RAN, for us, is the reality,” he added.
The flagship project in the U.K. has a target of deploying open RAN on at least 2,500 sites by 2027, in collaboration with partners Capgemini, Dell, Intel, NEC, Samsung and Wind River.
The U.K. installation was officially kicked off in August 2023, although the first 5G open RAN site was switched on in January 2022 and the first 4G site in 2020. At the TIP event in Madrid, Spain last year, Dona said the operator had deployed 22 sites in the towns of Torquay and Exeter.
Collaboration is key
Solanky also repeated Vodafone’s previous plea for more operators to engage in open RAN trials in order to support the further development of the technology and expand the ecosystem.
“It would be good overall for the ecosystem if more operators do these types of trials, or commit to open RAN, and then share the learnings across the industry,” he said.
Speaking at an event late last year, Pignatelli made clear that Vodafone intends to play a pivotal role in spreading the open RAN word and helping others to get on board.
At the time, he highlighted that open RAN is “a lot about collaboration,” and said large telecom groups such as Vodafone have “both the responsibility and the opportunity” to help smaller operators “get on to the open RAN journey.”
Solanky pressed home this message, noting that ongoing collaboration between operators and vendors, such as within TIP and the O-RAN Alliance, will be key to the success of open RAN.
“There are many small vendors coming out in this ecosystem, but they don’t have a clear understanding of what the needs of operators are. Again, there are very diverse needs. There are very different roadmaps that the vendors may have to develop, and they would have to prioritize the requirements. And the collaboration between operators on sharing these requirements is a very good starting point,” he said.
Looking ahead, Solanky also addressed the impact that 6G will have on open RAN. He noted that while O-RAN standards “were not mature during the 5G time frame … by the time 6G matures, everything could be ready from an interface point of view, and 6G could be just an application that could be onboarded.”
“There are many things that could be maturing in the next few years, which could be adopted in 6G and vice versa,” he added.
Open RAN journey so far
In terms of other open RAN developments, Vodafone started the commercial rollout of open RAN technology in 20 cities across Romania in February this year, has conducted shared open RAN pilots with Orange in Romania and undertaken a 5G standalone open RAN pilot in Italy with Nokia.
It also kicked off a request for quotes for open RAN technology across its entire global footprint of 170,000 sites, of which more than 100,000 are in Europe.