Open RAN and vRAN deployments by operators

STL Partners updated (April 2022) its Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker with a more granular focus on Open RAN tracking the on-going shift towards disaggregation across vendor ecosystems. Overall, it is still very early days with open RAN and vRAN, with 33 deployments in total, but we expect this to accelerate over the coming year.

To date, there have been significantly more open RAN than vRAN deployments. However, vRAN is emerging as a potentially competitive alternative to pure open RAN: offering the same operational benefits and – in theory – multi-vendor openness, but without the overhead of integrating components from multiple vendors, and a ‘single neck to choke’ if things go wrong.

Operator Open RAN and vRAN deployments

Source: STL Partners

  • Vodafone is the leading player in terms of live deployments. It has partnered with Parallel Wireless for open RAN deployments in Ireland and Turkey, and with Mavenir in the UK and India. It is currently rolling out Samsung vRAN in the UK
  • Verizon is deploying 5G vRAN from Samsung and Ericsson
  • Telefónica’s trials in Germany, UK, Spain and Brazil are expected to be followed by large-scale commercial deployments from 2023 onwards
  • Etisalat’s deployment in the UAE with Altiostar is complete, while its Parallel Wireless deployment in Afghanistan is, we believe, still underway
  • Bharti Airtel has deployed vRAN small cells with Sercomm to improve indoor coverage, and open RAN in the macro network with Altiostar
  • Orange has an ongoing deployment of 2G, 3G and 4G open RAN in Central African Republic
  • Deutsche Telekom has deployed Mavenir open RAN in what it dubs its ‘O-RAN Town’: Neubrandenburg
  • Telecom Italia has hailed its October 2021 deployment in the south-west Piedmont region as one of the most extensive open RAN coverages in Europe

Notable greenfield deployments due to go live in 2022 are those of 1&1 Drillisch in Germany (based on Rakuten’s Symworld platform) and Dish Networks in the USA

See our latest April 2022 report Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker: Open RAN deep diveAccess our online Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker tool

See our Top 10 telco cloud vendors from the November 2021 tracker update.

Further research

Visit our Telco Cloud research stream