Vodafone says it will roll out O-RAN across the North-West of the Irish Republic, as part of its plans to use O-RAN for ‘at least’ 2,600 sites in the UK.

“It is a pivotal moment in the provision of mobile coverage to rural communities in Ireland,” says Vodafone Ireland CTO Didier Clavero, “as this pioneering new approach reduces cost, increases flexibility and enables new suppliers to support the expansion of Vodafone’s mobile network in hard to reach areas”.
Vodafone’s first deployment of an O-RAN network in the UK was at the Royal Welsh Showground in August using Mavenir technology.
Vodafone has run O-RAN trials in Turkey, Mozambique and the Congo.

“By shifting networks to virtualised open RAN, quality coverage can be delivered to many new subscribers at much lower cost with faster time-to-market,” says Keith Johnson, COO of  Parallel Wireless which partnered Vodafone in trialling O-RAN in Ireland.