Axiata Group said it will be investing in Open Radio Access Networks (Open RAN) as part of a network transformation program across Asia.
Axiata has conducted Open RAN commercial field pilots in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka through partnerships with network solutions providers Mavenir and Parallel Wireless and supported by India’s Infosys as systems integrator (SI).
Axiata it will start commercial deployments of Open RAN by year end.
Thomas Hundt, Axiata’s Group Executive Vice President – Technology said: “Open RAN is the future for mobile networks, and it will be critical for 4G expansions as well as the 5G evolution that Axiata’s markets will soon embrace.”
Axiata has deployed the MAVair Open vRAN solution including all G Open RAN, Packet Core and Mobile Network applications at selected sites, in Malaysia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. To simulate non-ideal backhaul conditions, the sites selected are connected with non-ideal backhaul (microwave links), and in some cases satellite, making this the first satellite backhaul powered Open vRAN sites in the world.
Axiata was able to achieve the first live commercial service integration of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP)’s Evenstar 4G Radio through Mavenir’s MAVair O-RAN based solution for Open RAN. Axiata is a participant of the TIP initiative.
Parallel Wireless is the US-based Open RAN company delivering all G, cloud-native Open RAN solutions. Axiata successfully demonstrated commercial deployment of 2G and 4G Open RAN connectivity within its network in Sri Lanka which is operated by Dialog Axiata.
Parallel Wireless’s solutions enabled 2G and 4G technology to be installed on the same radio units, with baseband deployed on a x86 commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) platform, and all other applications deployed on Axiata’s OpenStack cloud infrastructure.
Anand Swaminathan, EVP & Global Industry Leader, Communications, Media & Technology Infosys said, “The successful completion of the field trial on live network was a major milestone for accelerating the scaled deployment of virtual and Open RAN networks.”
