Parallel Wireless is to trial Open RAN on Vivacom’s 2G, 4G and 5G networks in Bulgaria. Vivacom is a subsidiary of United Group.
The aim of the trial is to show that Open RAN can deliver the equivalent or better performance than traditional radio access networks (RANs), in rural and urban settings, on the existing infrastructure.
Nikolay Andreev, CEO of Vivacom, says Open RAN can deliver “greater vendor diversity and much-needed innovation in the mobile radio network sector”, resulting in “flexibility and competitiveness for operators”, as well as improved services for customers.
Progress for Parallel
This looks like potentially a great showcase for Parallel Wireless which massively reduced its workforce in 2022 on the grounds that the market was not developing fast enough to support the company as it was.
Since then it has participated in a number of trials in Turkey with both Türk Telekom and Vodafone. The most recent involved trialling a RIC. In April the vendor announced it is to deploy Open RAN for Cellcom to deploy 5G Standalone core sites in Israel.
Source: https://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/vivacom-trials-open-ran-on-2g-3g-and-5g-networks/