DT kickstarts its Open RAN rollout with Nokia, Fujitsu

• Deutsche Telekom announced plans for Open RAN rollouts at the start of this year
• It is now moving ahead with its initial production network deployment in Germany
• Nokia and Fujitsu are the main vendor beneficiaries

This year is ending with a bit of an Open RAN flurry. Following the jaw-dropping news that AT&T has opted to splurge $14bn on Open RAN-enabled 5G gear from Ericsson and friends (including Fujitsu) – a move that all but killed Nokia’s role as a 5G radio access network (RAN) supplier to the giant US telco – Deutsche Telekom (DT) is moving ahead with its initial commercial Open RAN deployments in Neubrandenburg, a town of about 65,000 residents north of Berlin, with Nokia and Fujitsu. 

Plans for the rollout were initially announced at Mobile World Congress in February this year, shortly after DT had published a whitepaper that set out its Open RAN strategy. That whitepaper put to bed suggestions that the giant German operator might abandon its Open RAN plans following disappointing initial trials in Neubrandenburg, which the telco had dubbed O-RAN Town. 

The initial multivendor Neubrandenburg deployment (the scale of which is not known) will feature Nokia’s 5G AirScale baseband solution and Fujitsu radio units to deliver 2G, 4G and 5G services, and will be “extended” from the first quarter of next year, noted Nokia in this announcement. Nokia added that it is replacing “the incumbent vendor” (Huawei) with the deployment and is also now working with DT on Open RAN-related cloud RAN, RAN intelligent controller (RIC), service management and orchestration (SMO), energy efficiency and third-party containers-as-a-service (CaaS) technology options.   

TelecomTV is waiting to hear whether any vendors other than Nokia and Fujitsu are involved in this initial rollout and how many sites it covers. 

Deutsche Telekom also announced in February that it had selected Mavenir for an Open RAN rollout in a European market outside Germany, but there have been no updates on those plans as yet. 

News of Deutsche Telekom’s rollout in Germany comes only days after its new 5G rival in Germany, 1&1, switched on its greenfield Open RAN network to start delivering mobile services – see Germany’s 1&1 finally goes head-to-head with 5G rivals. 

Following the ignominy of being passed over in favour of its fierce rival Ericsson for AT&T’s Open RAN plans – speculation suggests that the Swedish vendor made the US telco a pricing offer it couldn’t refuse – getting its Open RAN hands dirty with a real-world deployment at one of Europe’s leading operators will come as a relief to Nokia, which maintains it is a “recognised leader in Open RAN”. 

And it’s another feather in Fujitsu’s Open RAN cap: The Japanese vendor is fast becoming the radio unit vendor of choice for Open RAN deployments across the world, as it can now boast deals in North America, Europe and Asia (where it is a supplier to and partner of NTT Docomo).     

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV