NEC and Mavenir said that the technologies have been deployed at the Orange Gardens campus in Chatillon
NEC and Mavenir have deployed massive MIMO (mMIMO) on Orange’s 5G Standalone (SA) experimental network, the companies said in a joint release.
As part of the deal, Mavenir’s cloud-native Open virtualized Radio Access Network (Open vRAN) software has been deployed on Orange’s cloud infrastructure with NEC’s 32T32R mMIMO active antenna unit (AAU) to deliver high capacity and enhanced coverage.
The technologies have been deployed at the Orange Gardens campus in Chatillon near Paris, and are part of the extension of project Pikeo – Orange’s cloud-based and fully automated 5G SA experimental network.
“Mavenir and NEC’s successful Open RAN deployment of mMIMO on Orange’s Innovation 5G SA experimental network is a major stepping stone on the road towards Open RAN deployments and illustrates Orange’s commitment to support the development of multi-vendor Open RAN solutions with innovative partners. Our Open RAN Integration Center, open to our partners worldwide, contributes to the development of a strong Open RAN ecosystem in Europe,” said Arnaud Vamparys, SVP of radio access networks and microwaves at Orange.
“Deploying 5G SA mMIMO is a significant milestone in developing Open RAN and transitioning from virtualized to cloudified networks. We are very proud of our continuing collaboration with Orange, NEC and other companies that are proving the potential of the multi-vendor, cloud-native, standards-based approach,” said Hubert de Pesquidoux, executive chairman of Mavenir.
“The latest deployment of Open RAN mMIMO in Europe is another milestone for Open RAN and one that required close collaboration and tight integration between multiple vendors. This synergy is exactly what Open RAN needs to successfully deliver on its promise of a truly open multi-vendor ecosystem,” said Naohisa Matsuda, general manager of NEC’s 5G Strategy and Business.
Orange opened this O-RAN facility in November 2021. At the time of the inauguration, the telco said that the center will be accessible to equipment suppliers of the Open RAN ecosystem, start-ups and system integrators, wishing to test the operation and interoperability of their components with those of other suppliers.
The main objective of the O-RAN center is to allow, in the long term, the deployment of networks capable of working with hardware and software from different suppliers.
This laboratory was awarded the OTIC (Open Testing and Integration Center) label by the O-RAN Alliance, of which Orange is a founding member.
Orange initially launched commercial 5G services in 15 municipalities at the beginning of December 2020.
The operator said that the service will be initially offered though frequencies in the 3.5 GHz band and may be supplemented by the use of 2.1 GHz frequencies.
Orange previoulsy said it was planning to introduce 5G Standalone services for business users in 2022, with 5G SA for the general public to follow in 2023.
The telco’s 5G network was available in 900 towns and cities across France, according to the operator’s website.
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