Despite much banging of the Open RAN drum from Vodafone UK over the years, those ambitions will not be upheld at the new merged entity, VodafoneThree. The latest equipment deals, which total around £2 billion, include Nokia and Ericsson, but no sign of Vodafone’s Open RAN pal Samsung. This is not quite the end of the road for Samsung and Vodafone, since there are still deals to be made in Vodafone Group’s continental operations.
The main takeaway from the latest announcement from VodafoneThree is that Samsung Networks, which had been key to Vodafone UK’s ambitions, is no longer on the roster. Vodafone UK’s relentless enthusiasm for Open RAN fitted in with the UK government’s goal to have 35% of UK networks running on Open RAN systems.
The flagship Open RAN project was part of a Huawei rip-and-replace program, where Vodafone was going to replace 2,500 sites in the Southwest of the UK with Open RAN systems using Samsung equipment.
While some of these sites have been upgraded, the full Open RAN upgrade seems to have fallen by the wayside. There was talk from Vodafone in 2023 that the Open RAN / Huawei rip-and-replace project was a burden.
“Although it’s going to plan, it has slowed us down considerably on our 5G rollout. We have to swap before we can roll out,” said Andrea Dona, Vodafone UK’s Chief Network Officer at the time. VodafoneThree did not respond to questions about the status of its Open RAN program in the UK at the time of publishing.
Perhaps the Open RAN rallying was a means to an end, to win over the UK government’s support of the merger with Three UK. Now that the merger has succeeded, Open RAN is no longer needed.
For Samsung at least, this is not the end of the road with the Vodafone Group. It will still have a share in Vodafone’s Open RAN deals in Europe.
“While we respect VodafoneThree’s decision to consolidate their existing vendor relationships, the transition has opened significant opportunities for us to expand our presence in Europe as a major vendor awarded in Vodafone’s Spring 6 tender,” the vendor told TelecomTV.
“This development allows us to support Vodafone’s Open RAN deployment at scale across Europe. Samsung will deliver 4G/5G virtualized Open RAN, an AI-powered CognitiV Network Operations Suite, and SI services at scale, across multiple countries in Europe. We continue to see Open RAN interest and growth across the globe, including Europe.”
This relates to Vodafone’s RAN refresh of all its sites, which would include Vodafone’s 100,000 sites in Europe. At one point, Vodafone had a goal to reboot 30% of its European sites to run on Open RAN technology by 2030.
But the tender contract has been infamous for its longevity. The request for proposals (RFP) launched in 2019, was then initially delayed by Covid, and still vendors are waiting to hear what the deal will look like.
Vodafone’s ambitions in Europe will also be diminished after its downsizing. Vodafone sold off its operations in Hungary, Spain, and Switzerland in the last two years.
We dived into Samsung Network’s repositioning towards AI RAN last week, and its toning down of discussion of Open RAN. At one point, as recently as last year, Samsung expected that Open RAN would be a useful angle for growing RAN market share.
Waning momentum in Open RAN has likely led Samsung to clarify a new angle for its virtualized networks, which is now ‘AI-Powered Networks.’
Shortly after the Vodafone-Three merger was completed, the MNO announced that it had switched on Multi-Operator Core Network (MOCN) to combine the two networks.
This was a signal that Vodafone’s Open RAN plans in the Southwest would be culled, since it has gained access to Three’s network and would not need to refresh its own in the Southwest.
As of August, MOCN had been enabled at 500 masts across the UK. By March 2026, 10,000 more network sites will have MOCN. VodafoneThree expects that 95% of the rollout will be complete within six years, with the entire rollout finished in eight years. The deployment is initially focused on areas of the country that have poor signal from one or the other operator.
There was no clarity on when there would be a new single core for the combined network, only that it would take several years.
Nuts and bolts
Ericsson has agreed contracts worth £1 billion in the new deals. This is an eight-year deal for radio and core hardware and software for 10,000 of the 17,000 sites in the combined network.
Ericsson’s equipment will exclusively cover London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast. This will include Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core solution, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), and Ericsson Cloud Native Infrastructure Solution.
Nokia will provide its AirScale RAN technology for about 7,000 sites. This includes equipment from its AirScale RAN portfolio, powered by ReefShark System-on-Chip technology, as well as Habrok Massive MIMO radios, multiband Pandion Remote Radio Heads, and baseband functions.
Site-build firms Beacon Communication Services, Circet Wireless, M Group, and WHP Telecoms will also play a role.