- DT is now looking for vendor partners as open RAN gets ready for primetime.
- The Group remains convinced of the need for both mobile and fixed-access disaggregation.
Claudia Nemat, Head of Technology & Innovation at Deutsche Telekom (DT), reiterated Group aims to commercially roll out open radio access networks (RAN) in 2023, and indicated that DT is currently in the process of selecting open RAN vendors for the deployment.
Nemat echoed comments made by Dr, Alex Jinsung Choi, Senior Vice-President of Strategy and Technology Innovation at DT, who indicated in late-2021 that DT’s ambition is to make open radio access networks a “deployable option in our footprint starting from 2023 onwards, with a focus on deployments at scale” (Deutsche Telekomwatch, #108).
Although Nemat did not reveal any vendor names during her keynote on DT’s stand at Mobile World Congress 2022 (MWC 2022), equipment vendors participating in the Group’s O-RAN Town deployment in Neubrandenburg, Germany would appear likely contenders (Deutsche Telekomwatch, #108). Fujitsu and NEC provided remote radio units for the project, while Mavenir supplied cloud-native baseband software for 4G and 5G distributed units and central units, including multiple input, multiple output (mMIMO) radio units.
Nemat herself has recently called for “decisive action” from European policymakers and industry stakeholders to ensure Europe does not fall behind in the new open RAN ecosystem (Deutsche Telekomwatch, #110).
She also made use of her MWC keynote to highlight another trial at DT that, among other aspects, aims to improve the energy efficiency of open RAN networks. “Open radio access networks have many advantages, like choice or innovation, but some disadvantages… today, O-RAN is less energy efficient compared to the traditional single radio access technology”, Nemat observed.
Here, she appeared to be referring to trials at DT’s lab in Bonn to improve open RAN scalability and economics, in collaboration with Cohere Technologies, Intel, Mavenir, and VMware (Deutsche Telekomwatch, #192). She said the trial with Intel in Bonn had achieved a reduction in electricity consumption of about 30%.
Nemat further highlighted DT’s push in recent years for the disaggregation of fixed-access networks — and not just the RAN. Indeed, DT was able to reveal further progress in this area at MWC 2022, announcing a partnership with Reliance Jio and plans for “national” rollout in Germany for its long-gestated disaggregated Access 4.0 initiative, which the Group unveiled in 2017 to lower total cost of ownership and accelerate time-to-market in the delivery of fixed-line broadband services (see separate).
Franz Seiser, Vice-President, Access Disaggregation at DT, insisted that the Group remains convinced that open RAN is the right way to go, despite the technology challenges it has faced over the last two years. In a panel discussion on TelecomTV, Seiser said that although some industry participants still have their doubts about open RAN, the attitude in the industry has changed. This is “exactly how we hoped it to be… we wanted to bring in new players; we wanted to drive more innovation, more competition; we see that happening… not everything we have seen is ready for primetime yet, but I expect some pretty significant announcements later this year”, he said.
