O-RAN Deutsche Telekom launches first O-RAN network in Germany
German operator Deutsche Telekom has switched on its first Open-RAN (O-RAN) network in the country, the telco said in a release.
The so-called “O-RAN Town”, which has been deployed in the
city of Neubrandenburg, Germany, is a multi-vendor open RAN network that will
deliver O-RAN-based 4G and 5G services across up to 25 sites. The first sites
are now deployed and integrated into the live network of Deutsche Telekom.
Claudia Nemat, board member for technology and innovation
with Deutsche Telekom, said: “Switching on our O-RAN Town including massive
MIMO is a pivotal moment on our journey to drive the development of open RAN as
a competitive solution for macro deployment at scale. This is just the start.
We will expand O-RAN Town over time with a diverse set of supplier partners to
further develop our operational experience of high-performance multi-vendor
open RAN.”
The telco explained that the integration, testing and the
lifecycle management of components is challenging, as the hardware and software
components in a multi-vendor open RAN are coming from different vendors.
To address this challenge, Deutsche Telekom has developed
and introduced a vendor-independent Service Management and Orchestration (SMO),
using ONAP open source as the foundation, for service automation across all
network domains. Deutsche Telekom is developing the SMO to be the center piece
for full life-cycle management (LCM) of all O-RAN components.
“Another key goal
with O-RAN is to benefit from automation. In the near future, we can more
flexibly add new network features, resolve traffic issues or intelligently
reduce power consumption,” Nemat said. “Through our independent management
framework, we are getting operational experience of utilizing automation to
address the integration challenge, complexity and improving outcomes in a truly
multi-vendor O-RAN system,” the executive added.
The carrier said that the first live sites at O-RAN Town
were built using equipment from Dell, Fujitsu, Intel, Mavenir, NEC and
Supermicro. The remote radio units (O-RU) are provided by Fujitsu and NEC,
including Fujitsu’s LTE and 5G NR O-RUs
and NEC’s 32T32R 5G massive MIMO (mMIMO) radio units (RU) conforming to
O-RAN Alliance fronthaul specifications, embedded with advanced beamforming
technologies.
Mavenir provided the cloud-native baseband software for the
4G and 5G distributed units (O-DU) and central units (O-CU), including for the
mMIMO radio units. The virtualized baseband software is running on standard
server hardware provided by Dell and Supermicro. The entire O-RAN Cloud
architecture is built on top of the Intel FlexRAN software architecture, the
German carrier said.
Deutsche Telekom said it plans to expand O-RAN Town in
phases across 2021 and 2022, working with different sets of vendors. These
solutions are currently being tested in the lab to ensure interoperability
across all components.
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