Ericsson has underlined its commitment to lead the
industrialization of Open RAN and bring the benefits of cloud-based open
network architecture to the industry, including support for open fronthaul in
its Cloud RAN and radio portfolios.
Through its leadership in the O-RAN Alliance, Ericsson has
together with the industry, now reached the critical milestones towards
defining the next generation open fronthaul interface required to bring
performance at scale to Open RAN.
Ericsson has deployed over one million radios that are
hardware-ready for the next generation of open fronthaul technology and, with
the new radio platforms released this year, it has a complete Open RAN-ready
offering across its Massive MIMO and remote radio portfolios. In addition,
Ericsson will introduce support for open fronthaul in its Cloud RAN portfolio,
starting in 2024.
Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks at
Ericsson, says: “We believe that the
biggest revolution in future mobile networks is the introduction of cloud-based
open networks, which will enable a move towards fully programmable mobile
networks. We are enabling an open and growing ecosystem of innovation together
with our customers and partners. Today we bring more details to our previously
announced transition to the introduction of Open RAN support across our
portfolio.”
Industry-scale Open RAN
Ericsson believes that future networks need to be increasingly
resilient, open, sustainable, and intelligent. Open RAN plays an important role
in achieving this vision, and Ericsson is leading the industrialization of the
three pillars of Open RAN: cloudification, open fronthaul and open management
for network programmability.
In a disaggregated environment, end-to-end system performance,
automation using AI software extensions, and continuous development are
essential for high performance. With the Ericsson Intelligent Automation
Platform (EIAP), Ericsson is enabling multivendor network
management, improving network performance and enhancing customer experience
while enabling extensive RAN programmability to deliver operational savings.
EIAP offers industrial scale automation for Cloud RAN, purpose-built and
multi-vendor radio access networks together with an open, standards-based
software development kit (SDK) that empowers and enables innovation from across
the industry – service providers, third-party software vendors, and network
providers.
Ericsson is enabling an ecosystem of innovations that accelerate
the development and deployment of high performance and cost-efficient Open RAN
at scale.