Last year, Vodafone had chosen Samsung as its leading vendor for 5G deployment in the UK. Now, the companies have announced that they've opened the UK's first 5G Open RAN site, carrying live customer traffic. Over 2,500 more such sites will be opened in the country in the future.
The UK's first 5G Open RAN site is situated in Bath. A 5G video call was made between Vodafone UK's Chief Network Officer Andrea Dona and the UK Government's Minister of State for Media (Data and Digital Infrastructure) Julia Lopez to commemorate this achievement.
The companies said that they would test the performance of such 5G Open RAN deployments through important metrics such as inter-frequency handover, inter-Radio Access Technology mobility, and security. They will also make sure that the deployments are compliant with Open RAN specifications.
If you didn't know already, Samsung's 5G Open RAN technology allows network carriers to power 5G networks through COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) servers while offering the same performance as dedicated hardware-based equipment. The company's cloud-native and container-based architecture offer more flexible and cost-effective 5G network deployments and improved network management.
Samsung and Vodafone will also test other advanced 5G technologies such as DSS (Dynamic Spectrum Sharing) and EN-DC (E-UTRAN New Radio Dual Connectivity). DSS assigns time-frequency resources based on the requirements and simultaneously accommodates 4G and 5G users. EN-DC boosts coverage, network speeds, and reliability by combining 4G and 5G resources.
Thomas Riedel, Head of Samsung Networks Europe at Samsung Electronics, said, “Samsung is proud to collaborate with Vodafone UK to switch on the UK's first 5G Open RAN site. This will help deliver the benefits of our carrier-grade 5G vRAN solutions to millions of Vodafone UK customers.”
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