The promises made by Telekom, Vodafone and O2 for 5G are great, but are they being kept? What the network operators have been doing to date.
Telekom board member Nemat also complains that two European and two Chinese suppliers currently account for “more than 90 per cent of the market” for mobile communications equipment. Your group wants to become more independent in the future and relies on a new technology called Open RAN.
RAN is the abbreviation for Radio Access Network, in German: radio access network. So far, mobile networks have primarily been based on relatively rigid solutions from individual providers who work with proprietary hardware and software. Open RAN breaks that open and also allows a mix of providers. Because most of this is controlled by software, so you don’t use specialized but multi-purpose hardware. The Munich-based group Telefónica has now advanced in this matter. The first German network operator to use the technology lived at three locations in Landsberg am Lech, Bavaria, initially only in a pilot test. It should get going in autumn next year.
