Open Ecosystem RAN

Validating Commercial Readiness of Open vRAN: VMware and Mavenir Streamline Deployments with Automation   

Open RAN has been gaining momentum in the telecom industry, but it has also faced criticism. One of the most common misconceptions is that Open RAN lacks commercial readiness, which has led to concerns about its viability compared to traditional, vendor-locked solutions.   

To address these concerns, collaboration and validation between technology partners are crucial to build an open ecosystem and fully realize the benefits of Open RAN’s open and interoperable interfaces. These strategic partnerships are the key to unlocking the commercial readiness of Open RAN and providing Communication Service Providers (CSPs) with a blueprint to accelerate network transformation. 

VMware has an extensive partner ecosystem of virtualized RAN (vRAN) vendors and is committed to helping CSPs take advantage of a horizontal platform with consistent operations across distributed RAN sites. One of its leading technology partners, Mavenir, is enabling CSPs to deploy its award-winning Open Virtualized RAN (Open vRAN) solution. 

Together, VMware and Mavenir have committed to validating the commercial readiness of Open vRAN.  The partnership includes close collaboration between the R&D teams of both companies to fully test and validate Mavenir’s Open vRAN solution on VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN, accelerating the overall time to market for vRAN deployments. 

Figure 1: The validation of the Mavenir’s Open vRAN solution on VMware Telco Cloud Platform 

In spirit of openness, Mavenir’s O-DU and O-CU form an O-RAN compliant solution that has been integrated with multiple O-Cloud and O-RU solutions. VMware’s Telco Cloud Platform RAN provides several advantages for CSPs, for example, the ability to use VMware Telco Cloud Automation, providing a single tool for multi-layer automation, streamlining the deployment and operation of distributed RAN sites with lifecycle management. The use of automation in the deployment of Open vRAN networks provides a more efficient and cost-effective solution than traditional manual methods. 

Watch our demonstration of Mavenir’s Open vRAN network functions leveraging VMware Telco Cloud Automation.

Open vRAN technology has faced criticism in terms of commercial deployment success, leading to concerns about its viability in comparison to traditional vendor-locked solutions. The validation of the Mavenir’s Open vRAN solution on VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN and the recent deployment of over 7,100 Open RAN radio sites—supporting over 40,000 radios—in a live commercial network are strong testaments to the commercial readiness, scalability, and efficiency of the joint Open vRAN solution. 

Read our Solution Brief for more information: https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/docs/vmw-telco-cloud-platform-ran-mavenir.pdf