SCONDA

Partners

• AWTG
• Three
• Boldyn
• University of Surrey
• Mavenir
• PI Works
• Scotland 5G Centre
• University of Glasgow
• Accenture

Project Summary

The SCONDA (Small Cells ORAN in Dense Areas) Project, seeks to address the unique technical and commercial challenges of High-Density Demand areas and will be the first in the world to integrate Open RAN and Traditional RAN in a high density, high demand environment handling live traffic.

The SCONDA project will build, integrate, optimise and deliver an Open RAN network in Glasgow City Centre, integrated to the existing Three UK Core Network, operating alongside their traditional RAN. The Glasgow City Centre location chosen has been identified as a current hotspot for Three customers both in footfall and mobile traffic and the project will handle live traffic from Three customers aiming to provide improvement in both coverage and capacity.

SCONDA creates a small cell densification layer in high demand urban hotspots to offload the macro traffic and provide a better customer experience. The project will further enable automation of the network performance within the challenging radio environment of Glasgow City Centre. The project aims to demonstrate how Open RAN can be deployed, integrated and managed within the wider Three network in Glasgow and evaluate how open RAN compares with the quality and capacity of a traditional RAN network.

Soufiane Ayed Senior RAN Strategy & Architecture Manager Transport at Three said: 

“The SCONDA project represent a unique opportunity for Three to demonstrate its commitment to DSIT ambition to carry 35% of the UK’s network traffic over open and interoperable RAN architectures by 2030.  Three with its current multivendor RAN network, regards this project as a show case of collaboration between multiple partners to help maturing open RAN deployment in complex dense environments , while enabling and leveraging automation to ensure open RAN coexistence with the traditional RAN.”

Billy D’Arcy, UK & Ireland Chief Executive of Boldyn Networks said: 

“Boldyn Networks is committed to investing in infrastructure within the UK - enhancing connectivity, enabling digital transformation, and fostering economic growth. We are proud to be a winning consortium for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s (DSIT) Open Network Ecosystem (ONE) competition, and we look forward to working with our consortium partners Three UK, Glasgow City Council, and CityFibre to deploy open RAN solutions at scale in a real-world setting. The neutral host approach has a pivotal role to play in the rollout of advanced wireless networks and will help to deliver on the objectives of the Wireless Infrastructure Strategy.”

Abbey Alidoosti, CEO of AWTG said: 

“AWTG is very proud to be leading the winning consortium, SCONDA, for the DSIT Open Network Ecosystem (ONE) Competition. The SCONDA project is the first in the world to integrate Open RAN to an existing Traditional RAN in a live and high-density demand environment. The SCONDA consortium are made up strong partners with proven track record in the industry and together we will  create positive impact towards a truly open network ecosystem in the UK. AWTG’s continued investment in Open RAN demonstrates our commitment to innovation and having these innovations deployed and proven in the most challenging real-world settings”.