The Telecom Infra Project has announced new trials of its open network specifications as well progress among vendors and operators in adopting TIP-based equipment.
The industry group said it's seen a rapid increase in demand for advanced OpenRAN trials and deployments. Following on the heels of its TIP Summit announcement, Vodafone has launched trials in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is progressing with trials in the UK and Ireland. In Indonesia, Indosat Ooredoo and Smartfren will conduct the first OpenRAN field trials in the APAC region. Smartfren has also conducted and completed the first OpenRAN lab trial in the region.
Meanwhile in Malaysia, Edotco, the tower arm of Axiata group, is collaborating with Celcom Axiata in conducting lab trials with the path to field trials. Following their announcement of OpenRAN deployment in the UAE, Etisalat is starting trials of OpenRAN systems in other regions. In North America, Sprint completed its RFI evaluation and will begin trials of OpenRAN 5G NR technologies in its TIP Community Lab.
Evenstar RRU
Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Mavenir, Parallel Wireless, MTI, AceAxis, Facebook Connectivity and additional partners have unveiled the Evenstar RRU (Remote Radio Units). The Evenstar program will focus on building general-purpose RAN reference designs for 4G/5G networks in the Open RAN ecosystem that are aligned with 3GPP and O-RAN specifications.
By decoupling the RRU hardware, DU and CU software, mobile network operators will have the ability to select best-of-breed components and the flexibility to deploy solutions from an increasing number of technology partners, TIP said. The intention is to contribute the proposed solution into TIP’s OpenRAN Project Group to help accelerate adoption.
TIP also announced increased coordination with the O-RAN Alliance. Other new cooperations include an agreement with the GSMA to share information on service provider requirements with TIP Project Group work streams and agreements with the OpenStack Foundation and the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance to jointly explore collaboration areas on the newly formed Open Core Network Project Group.
Airtel, MTN to trial DCSG
The Disaggregated Cell Site Gateway from the Open Optical & Packet Transport Project Group has seen Airtel complete lab trials. The Indian operator plans to move into field trials, with the aim of commercial deployments this year. Following Vodafone in South Africa, MTN also is preparing to advance DCSG to field trials as well. Dell EMC continues to work on a configuration with SONiC, an open source network operating system, on DCSG including zero touch provisioning.
Alongside DCSG, the expanding OOPT product portfolio landed commitments from Edgecore and Wistron to develop the hardware for Phoenix (formerly known as Apollo), a 400G optical transponder. The Phoenix spec is now fully approved and available.
Also in the OOPT family, IP Infusion is announcing the general availability of its Cassini Operating System. Whitestack led a trial of the Cassini technology at Telefonica del Peru and is implementing some of the first projects (combining optics and Layer2/3) in Latin American operators.
New project: Disaggregated Open Router
Finally, the OOPT Project Group is announcing the launch of a new initiative focused on the development of Disaggregated Open Routers (DOR). The initiative will be led by KDDI and Vodafone. Several OOPT technology providers including Adva, Delta, Drivenets, Edgecore, Exaware and Ufispace have committed to support the activity. In addition, Orange has adopted GNPy (an optical planning tool developed as part of the OOPT Project Group) for its RFPs and production network planning, to benchmark equipment performance in multi-vendor optical networks.
In terms of specifications, the Wireless Backhaul Project Group (formerly Open Box Microwave) completed its specification for Wireless Backhaul v1.0, which was approved for member review. The specification is expected to be publicly available in March. Aviat Networks has produced the first TIP-compliant wireless backhaul multi-band (e-band and microwave) system with open netconf/yang interfaces.
New labs in Japan, China, Brazil
For testing the TIP solutions, KDDI is opening up the first TIP Community Lab in Japan, supporting DCSG solutions and the OOPT Project Group initially, and expanding to other technologies in the future. China Unicom has announced that it has joined the OpenRAN 5G NR Project Group and is preparing to launch the first TIP Community Lab in China to support the project.
TIM Brasil also announced its intent to be the first incubator for a 'Total Site Solution' aimed at addressing rural use cases. TIM will work in conjunction with Facebook Connectivity to advance the TSS configuration through TIP Community Labs and onto the TIP Exchange. The first committed participants are TIP partners Baicells for RAN and Gilat Satellite Networks for satellite transport. A PlugFest is planned for Q2.