As one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators, Orange provides mobile services to 222 million users in 26 countries including Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The group plans to deploy O-RAN Alliance compliant base stations starting with indoor and rural configurations and expand to new deployments in the coming years.
“Open RAN is a major evolution of radio access that requires deeper cooperation within the industry. With our European peers, we want to accelerate the development of Open RAN solutions that meet our needs. After the publication of common specifications, Orange’s Open RAN Integration Center will support the development and tuning of solutions from a broad variety of actors,” said Orange senior vice president of radio access networks and microwaves Arnaud Vamparys.
Samsung says it’s vRAN solutions can help ensure more network flexibility, greater scalability, and resource efficiency for network operation by replacing dedicated baseband hardware with software elements. Additionally, Samsung said it’s vRAN supports both low and mid-band spectrums, as well as indoor and outdoor solutions. Samsung is the only major network vendor that has conducted vRAN commercial deployments with Tier one operators in North America, Europe and Asia, the company stated.
“We are pleased to participate in Orange's innovative laboratory,” said Samsung Electronics executive vice president head of global sales & marketing networks business Woojune Kim.
“Through this collaboration, we look forward to taking networks to new heights in the European market, enabling operators to offer more immersive mobile services to their users.”
By opening its Open RAN Integration Center in Châtillon, near Paris, Orange will enable the testing and deployment of networks capable of operating with innovative technologies, which will serve as the backbone of the operator's future networks. At the centre, Samsung and Orange will conduct trials to verify capabilities and performance of Samsung’s vRAN, radio and Massive MIMO radio.
Samsung says it has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end infrastructure solutions including chipsets, radios, and core. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung drives the industry to advance 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio from fully virtualised RAN and Core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools.
This first appeared in the subscription newsletter CommsWire on 22 November 2021.
