• MTN commits to broad Open RAN deployment
• Nokia opens Open RAN test centre in Dallas
• Mavenir builds a campus network to show off its capabilities… in Dallas

Open RAN and the US city of Dallas are the common factors among our leading news items today.

Pan-African operator MTN has committed to the broad testing and deployment of Open RAN technology starting this year. The operator says it’s working with a number of technology partners, including Altiostar, Mavenir, Parallel Wireless and Tech Mahindra. “At MTN we are alive to the potential of open interfaces. There is a lot of value that dominant players bring to the business, but telecommunications today is as much about the stability of the network as it is about new services,” stated MTN Group Chief Technology and Information Officer, Charles Molapisi. “Customers measure us against the speed with which we can deploy the latest technology and we are committed to finding faster and better ways to do that.” The operator has already been an active participant in the early Open RAN movement, having started with initial trial deployments in 2019, and says it already has more than 1,100 Open RAN sites in 11 countries. For further details, see this announcement.  

Nokia has opened its first Open RAN (O-RAN) Collaboration and Testing Center at its offices in Dallas, Texas. “The center is designed to support the development of partnerships among O-RAN vendors that will help with the verification, introduction, and launch of O-RAN compliant solutions to market. In particular, vendors will be able to execute Interoperability Tests and end-to-end testing for O-RU/O-DU Open Fronthaul as well as xAPP testing for Nokia’s near-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC),” noted the vendor, adding that it “plans to open similar facilities at its other global offices around the world in the future.” No initial partners were identified. Read more.  

Still in Dallas… Mavenir has built a 4G/5G campus network in the city to “demonstrate network integration across a suite of certified solutions, integration with 3rd party vendors for interoperability testing and a new approach to Open Virtualized Radio Access Network (Open vRAN) Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS)/OnGo® Private Network deployments.” The campus network “demonstrates open interoperability, test and implementation of end-to-end user applications, including IoT sensor and device connectivity,” notes the vendor in this announcement. Anyone would think that Dallas was home to a major network operator’s headquarters…

5G systems-on-a-chip startup EdgeQ says it can make Open RAN “an even more configurable, elastic, open wireless infrastructure” with what it says is the “industry’s first 5G chipset-as-a-service model, offering customers a future proof platform that can scale 5G and AI features as a function of subscription payments.” It adds: “By uniquely coupling EdgeQ’s software-driven base station-on-a-chip technology with a chipset-as-a-service model, customers can now focus on a virtualized 5G deployment model where feature attributes can be turned on and off via software. EdgeQ’s unique combination of an elastic chip architecture and a softwarized RAN (radio access network) stack allows customers to only pay for features that map to their real needs.” Read more. 

Syniverse is teaming up with AlefEdge to enable “global enterprises and their developers to create their own 5G Edge networks and launch 5G Edge applications and services in minutes.” This is possible, say the partners, by combining Syniverse’s Global SIM and private LTE wireless service capabilities with AlefEdge’s EdgeNet platform. “Syniverse offers a scalable, pay-as-you-grow private wireless platform that enables enterprise users and devices using EdgeNet and The 5G Edge API to securely connect to a private wireless network and simultaneously seamlessly connect to local public mobile networks,” notes Syniverse in this announcement.

Edge cloud startup Macrometa, which “enables web and cloud native developers to build and run transformative, event driven, data heavy, concurrent, serverless cloud applications globally across an expansive network of 175 edge regions,” has raised $20 million to take its total funding to about $29 million. Get the full details in this press release and this blog.

HMD Global will use Nokia’s Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) to enable global IoT connectivity for HMD’s IoT solution for enterprises. The collaboration will allow enterprise customers of the HMD Connect Pro service to track and manage connected devices around the world. Read more.