Telefonica and NEC have announced the launch of an Open-RAN live pilot in four global markets.
The two companies will conduct pre-commercial trials in Telefonica’s four core global markets: Spain, Germany, the UK and Brazil.
The announcement follows successful trials conducted by Telefonica in Germany and the UK. NEC will serve as the prime system integrator to implement and conduct the trials of multi-vendor-based open RAN solutions with Telefonica group’s operating companies.
Telefonica is an early adopter of open networks and one of the major European operators that signed the Open RAN MoU in January this year. The company also has a target to reach 50% radio network growth based on Open RAN by 2025.
“Open networks are undeniably the key to driving network evolution in the 5G era and to sustaining and fulfilling our mission of consistently delivering superior experiences to our consumer and enterprise customers,” said Enrique Blanco, Chief Technology & Information Officer (CTIO) at Telefónica.
