The Middle East’s Open RAN consortium publishes its first whitepaper

du has joined hands with the region’s leading telecom operators to pave the way for innovation in the ICT sector

Dubai, UAE, 24 October 2022

du, from Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), today announced the launch of the first Open RAN whitepaper with a focus on brownfield deployment opportunities and challenges. du is part of a consortium of leading telecom operators including e& formerly known as Etisalat Group, Zain Group, Mobily, Batelco and Omantel who have joined forces to accelerate the implementation of Open Radio Access Network (ORAN).

The launch of the first ORAN whitepaper heralds a new era of operators’ collaboration in the Middle East to accelerate the development of Open Network technologies and further contribute to the digital transformation agenda. This will help bring technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the forefront and drive strategic growth in technology. The implementation of ORAN solutions will support flexibility, efficiency and agility.

Saleem AlBlooshi, Chief Technology Officer at du said: “du is committed to improving its networks while boosting the digital economy by stimulating greater technological innovation. We are excited to take the next step in accelerating the pace of innovation and promoting the development of an open technology that will help to enhance the flexibility, efficiency, and security of our networks. This has multiple advantages for the customers as our networks will become highly programmable and automated, so we can foster collaboration and innovation, release new features quickly, provide capacity on demand, automate network management and deliver tailored enterprise solutions.” 

The consortium is committed to deploying Open RAN across their footprint, providing an opportunity for existing as well as new RAN vendors to adopt open interfaces, software, and hardware to build more agile and flexible mobile networks in the 5G era. It helps new entrants in the RAN business create value through innovation, prompt the telco equipment business to become more competitive to support current and future requirements of telcos, as well as offer choices to operators to achieve innovative solutions and cost efficiencies in RAN deployments.

In the whitepaper, the consortium elaborated on the elements that form the Open RAN deployment as well as challenges and opportunities for brownfield mobile network operators. The paper highlighted efforts of consortium members from field trials to lab establishments, vendor interactions and organisational engagements to verify the ecosystem, boost its readiness and navigate Open RAN use cases.

The Open RAN consortium launched the first regional community lab earlier this year, aiming to accelerate the testing and implementation of Open RAN solutions in their networks to support the early adoption and development of a robust regional ICT ecosystem. 

To know more and download the whitepaper, please visit https://telecominfraproject.com/open-ran-for-brownfield-operators-challenges-and-opportunities/