Written by Ray Le Maistre
- Vodafone is ready to issue a major request for quotation (RFQ) document to the vendor community
- The RFQ has Open RAN at its heart
- It covers the operator’s entire mobile portfolio of 170,000 sites
- The move will accelerate support for Open RAN functionality across the industry, believes Yago Tenorio, Vodafone fellow and network architecture director
- The operator is also embarking on 5G Open RAN trials in Italy with Nokia
MADRID – Fyuz 2023 – Vodafone confirmed its ongoing commitment to the Open RAN cause today with news that it will soon issue a request for quotation (RFQ) for mobile network infrastructure that covers all of its 170,000 mobile sites and has Open RAN at the heart of its technical requirements.
News of the RFQ was shared here this morning by Yago Tenorio (above), Vodafone fellow and network architecture director at the operator, which runs networks across Europe and Africa. Tenorio is also the chairman of the Telecom Infra project (TIP), the organiser of the Fyuz event, so he kicked off the event’s keynote sessions with an update about Vodafone’s plans, among other topics.
But this doesn’t mean Vodafone plans to immediately switch out all of its existing radio access network equipment with Open RAN-based systems. The operator is sticking with its previously stated plan to have Open RAN technology deployed at 30% of its European sites post-RFQ (2030 has been cited as a deadline of sorts) – the company long ago did the economic analysis of where it makes sense to deploy Open RAN and where it will continue with single RAN solutions.
And the timing is all linked to when its current RAN deals run out (early 2025), which is why the RFQ document is now imminent. The latest time it will be shared with Vodafone’s vendor partners will be April 2024 (because a process of this size will take at least a year, Tenorio told TelecomTV).
