BARCELONA – #MWC24 – Vodafone’s Open RAN network-in-a-box, which was unveiled just ahead of last year’s MWC event, is in the final stages of commercial preparation and will become available in June, according to Yago Tenorio (pictured above), Vodafone fellow and network architecture director at the operator.
Tenorio unveiled the low-cost, compact product at a media briefing last February (when it was about the size of a small home router) and Vodafone then displayed it at the company’s stand at last year’s show in Barcelona, where it attracted a lot of attention – see Vodafone unveils Open RAN 5G network-in-a-box and Vodafone ready for Open RAN 5G network-in-a-box next step.
Essentially, the product is a complete mobile network in a single box, comprising a software-defined radio (SDR) chipset developed by Lime Microsystems and a Raspberry Pi 4 personal computer that is capable of running any core software stack and RAN software that is suitably sized for a small network deployment, such as a private wireless network or a mobile network extension.
