Following the recent memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by four European giants – Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone – to promote and develop O-RAN platforms, Telecom Italia (TIM) has joined the party, adding its signature to the MoU.
The Italian incumbent was an early triallist of 5G-oriented virtualized RAN architectures and has worked with traditional and new partners, including Nokia and Altiostar. It is already a board member of the O-RAN Alliance and has worked on an open RAN project in Brazil under the auspices of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP).
Its CTIO, Michele Gamberini, said it is joining the cross-operator effort to support “Italian companies already developing solutions for new generation mobile networks”. This is a reference to one of the goals of supporting open RAN, encouraging the growth of a homegrown European supplier base for 5G (in addition to Nokia and Ericsson of course).
In Europe as in the USA, Japan and India, the bid for an open ecosystem is getting bound up with more nationalistic goals of supporting local industries and start-ups – a goal that is important in attracting government funding, which is one objective of the European MoU.
Gamberini added that the MoU “represents a solid opportunity to ensure our country plays a leading role as a provider of technologies for the digital transformation on a European scale… TIM is reinforcing its commitment to contribute to the development of Open RAN technology in Europe.”
But like the other European majors supporting the MoU, there is caution around timescales to deploy new technologies and vendors in large macro networks in the short term. TIM’s network engineering director, Marco di Constanzo, told Bnamericas:
“Open RAN is a journey. To say that open RAN is a network ready for massive roll-out in large centers would be foolhardy, because it still lacks maturity. In 2021 we should see a larger scale open RAN implementation. And in 2022–2023 the conditions will exist for this to become more relevant.” He added: “The coincidence of the maturity of open RAN with the roll-out of 5G on a large scale, which should occur from 2022, in Standalone format, is interesting”.