European carriers Orange and Vodafone have reached an agreement to build an Open Radio Access Network (RAN) with RAN sharing in rural parts of Europe where they both have mobile networks.
In a release, the two telcos said that the first commercial sites to be deployed under this agreement are planned to start this year in a rural area of Romania, near the city of Bucharest. Orange and Vodafone said they are currently working to individually select vendors for this initial build phase.
The partners noted that this announcement reinforces their respective commitments to rollout O-RAN as the technology of choice for future mobile networks across Europe—and to support the European Commission’s target to have 5G in all populated areas by 2030.
