What’s up with… Open RAN, Swisscom, Nvidia

• Viettel, the US DoD give Open RAN a boost  
• Swisscom takes a step closer to Vodafone Italy acquisition
• Nvidia provides next-gen chips to SoftBank, KDDI

In today’s industry news roundup: Vietnam’s Viettel launches its first 5G Open RAN sites, while the US Department of Defense unveils its Open RAN-friendly private 5G network strategy; Swisscom gets another approval for its Vodafone Italy acquisition and teams up with Ericsson for private 5G networks; SoftBank and KDDI are among a number of Japanese companies making use of the latest Nvidia AI chips; and much more!

Viettel, the Vietnamese operator that was awarded a 5G licence in April this year, has started to deploy Open RAN technology, including systems developed by its own team. According to the operator, initial base stations deployed in Hanoi and Ha Nam provinces are achieving parity with traditional radio access network (RAN) systems in terms of data speeds, coverage, capacity, power consumption, “while significantly reducing infrastructure costs”. The systems have been developed using 5G Open RAN chips from Qualcomm, “combined with Viettel’s expertise in network optimisation and deployment”, the operator announced. “The massive MIMO distributed units and radio units of this commercial network are fully compliant with Open RAN standards, as defined by the O-RAN Alliance,” the telco added. Durga Malladi, senior VP and general manager at Qualcomm’s Technology Planning & Edge Solutions division, noted: “We are thrilled to collaborate with Viettel on the launch of the first commercial O-RAN network utilising Qualcomm’s cutting-edge 5G RAN solutions. This milestone underscores our commitment to driving innovation in the telecommunications industry and enabling operators to deliver enhanced 5G experience. By leveraging our advanced technology, Viettel’s O-RAN radio units, distributed units, as well as RAN management with Qualcomm Edgewise, are empowering greater network flexibility, efficiency and performance, ultimately transforming the way people connect and communicate.” Viettel is set to deploy more than 300 Open RAN sites across various Vietnamese provinces in early 2025, “with the potential for thousands more as part of nationwide and international expansion plans in 2025 and beyond.” The operator isn’t just using Open RAN technology for its 5G rollout – it is also sourcing 5G gear from Nokia for its national rollout. Read more.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has unveiled its private 5G networks strategy, and Open RAN technology is set to play a big role. The DoD described the strategy as “a key enabler to the DoD’s modernisation effort to leverage 5G networks, both commercial and private, to deliver ubiquitous, high-speed connectivity for mobile capabilities… The DoD Private 5G Deployment Strategy provides guidance for the implementation and operation of private 5G networks at military installations while maximising Open RAN ecosystems,” it noted in this announcement. The DoD has a few main objectives: “First, DoD intends to align private 5G infrastructure with each installation’s unique mission, requiring decision-makers to evaluate whether specific mission, security, coverage and performance requirements can only be met by private 5G. Second, DoD aims to accelerate the acquisition, development and secure deployment of 5G, directing DoD components to additional implementation guidance to support the integration of new commercial 5G capabilities into DoD missions and systems. Finally, the strategy encourages the expansion of an Open radio access network (Open RAN) ecosystem.” At this week’s Fyuz event in Dublin, Ireland, Juan Ramirez, director of the 5G cross-functional team at the DoD, spoke on a TelecomTV-hosted panel discussion about the advantages of using an Open RAN architecture for such deployments, noting that this approach will allow the DoD to take advantage of innovative applications that can run on a RAN intelligent controller (RIC). 

Italy’s telecom regulator, Agcom, has cleared Swisscom’s planned €8bn acquisition of Vodafone Italy “unconditionally”, according to the Swiss telco. Swisscom announced an agreement to acquire Vodafone Italy in March, having signalled its intention to do so in February, and plans to merge the mobile operator with its existing Italian fixed line operation, Fastweb. But the deal isn’t done just yet because approval is still required from the Italian Competition Authority (Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato – AGCM), which in September opened an in-depth investigation to assess the acquisition under Italy’s merger control rules. According to Reuters, Swisscom has submitted a second set of remedies to the AGCM in order to secure its approval for the takeover. 

Still with Swisscom… The telco has teamed up with Ericsson to launch a 5G standalone (SA) mobile private network offering for Swiss companies. According to Swisscom, the vendor’s dual-mode core technology offers both 4G and 5G connectivity simultaneously, enabling “a wide range of innovative use cases for both indoor and outdoor environments, while easy integration into business processes, devices and applications ensures greater efficiency in productivity, costs and energy consumption.” Read more. 

In Japan, Nvidia’s engagement with SoftBank isn’t limited to the AI-RAN advances we reported elsewhere today: The AI chip giant is also supplying the network operator with its Blackwell platforms to “build Japan’s most powerful AI supercomputers, including the world’s first Nvidia DGX SuperPOD with Nvidia DGX B200 systems. SoftBank is “using its Nvidia AI infrastructure to accelerate a broad range of industries, including its subsidiary SB Intuitions, which is using Nvidia AI for the research and development of high-performance Japanese-native large language models (LLMs),” the vendor noted. 

And it isn’t just SoftBank that is working closely with Nvidia in Japan: The country’s second-largest telco, KDDI, “is launching AI computing infrastructure built with Nvidia HGX systems to support generative AI and specialised LLM development in collaboration with its Elyza business group. With Nvidia software, KDDI customers can use the infrastructure to accelerate AI model training and inference, build digital twins and run simulation workloads for autonomous vehicles, robotic motion control and sensor data processing,” stated the vendor. KDDI is also planning a liquid-cooled datacentre that is expected to feature the Nvidia GB200 NVL72 platform with NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchips. For more on this and what Nvidia is doing with other Japanese companies, see this announcement. 

Telecom software developer Radcom has appointed Benny Epstein, who has previously worked at Ericsson and Amdocs, as its new CEO, with effect from 1 December. “I am thrilled to join Radcom, a dynamic company with significant growth potential and market-leading assurance technology tailored for top-tier operators transitioning to 5G and the cloud. I aim to leverage this potential to accelerate global sales and enhance customer value,” noted Epstein, who will become the vendor’s fourth CEO in the past year (for further details on Radcom’s CEO woes, read this article). Interim CEO Hilik Itman will return to his role as the vendor’s chief operating officer from the beginning of next month. The good news for Radcom is that it looks like it finally has its CEO challenges settled and the good news for Epstein is that he’s joining a company that is growing: The vendor just reported a 20% year-on-year rise in third-quarter revenues to $15.8m and a net profit of $2.3m compared with a small loss a year earlier. 

– The staff, TelecomTV