Within the telecom industry, a robust endorsement for the O-RAN ecosystem has emerged—a testament to the sector’s commitment to accelerating open RAN adoption. This commitment is encapsulated in the Open RAN Ecosystem Experience (OREX), an O-RAN service brand by DOCOMO, collaboratively developed with multiplex global partners.
DOCOMO’s new open RAN service makes mobile networks a whole new experience, allowing operators to build open RAN networks with Service Customization in mind. By selecting OREX to deploy O-RAN networks, Communication Service Providers (CSPs) will benefit from reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), power consumption, and improved operations. In a strategic collaboration, DOCOMO, Fujitsu, Wind River, and Dell, have worked together to integrate and life cycle manage a specific OREX network blueprint. CSPs can benefit by leveraging the open and disaggregated advantages of the O-RAN ecosystem efficiently without incurring expensive network design and system integration tasks.
A multi-vendor stack for Open RAN:
To support Cloud RAN workloads and to provide the infrastructure layer for the full stack, Fujitsu chose Dell PowerEdge XR8000 and XR5610 servers. These ruggedized servers, which are ideally suited for O-RAN and vRAN deployments, are TCO-optimized, have short-depth, and NEBS certification. Dell engineers these servers for demanding deployment environments, and they integrate seamlessly with Wind River Studio.
Wind River’s Studio Cloud container as a service (CaaS) platform, a cloud-native toolset for deploying and operating distributed clouds at scale, is the cloud software that provides the abstraction layer between the 5G workloads and the infrastructure hardware.
The collaboration with Dell enables Fujitsu’s vRAN software deployed on Dell’s open RAN Accelerator. This inline accelerator, powered by Marvell, handles Layer 1 computations, offloading server CPU cores and eliminating the need for separate fronthaul and midhaul network interface cards (NIC).
Dell Open Telecom Ecosystems Lab (OTEL) has been selected for the full stack validation process. OTEL removes the risk from the open transformation journey that CSPs and telecom software vendors are undertaking by providing access to an advanced testing environment that can be accessed remotely using secure connectivity. OTEL established a collaborative testing environment to bring together engineering teams from DOCOMO, Fujitsu, Wind River, and Dell, to test the deployment readiness of this multivendor O-RAN blueprint. The engineering teams have cooperated to mutually agree on test scenarios that will be rigorously and repeatably tested to ensure the stability of the full stack.
“By embracing this validated design, CSPs now possess an end-solution that not only simplifies deployment but also expedites time to value—a testament to the collaborative efficiency with our partners DOCOMO, Fujitsu, and Wind River.”
Gautam Bhagra, Dell Technologies, Vice President (Telecom System Business – Strategic Alliances)
“The combined solution, powered by Fujitsu, Dell, and Wind River results in a remarkable 30 percent reduction in power consumption, contributing to environmental sustainability while also substantially reducing TCO.“
Scott Walker, Wind River Global Vice President (Telco Ecosystem and CSP Sales)
“By working together with NTT DOCOMO, Fujitsu, and Dell on the OREX RAN platform, we can deliver new efficiencies and greater flexibility to CSPs . . . . A proven solution with global service providers, Wind River Studio delivers a fully cloud-native, Kubernetes and container-based architecture for the development, deployment, operations, and servicing of distributed edge networks at scale.”
Scott Walker, Wind River Global Vice President (Telco Ecosystem and CSP Sales)
“The collaborative work among Fujitsu, Dell, Wind River, and DOCOMO helps all the OREX partners to expand their open RAN business opportunities by focusing on the development of their products and realizing timely end-to-end verification of integrated OREX products. Through this effort, we will provide true open RAN to CSPs across the globe.”
Masafumi Masuda, General Manager of Radio Access Network Technology Promotion Office, Radio Access Network Design Department (NTT DOCOMO, INC.)
This blog also appears on the Dell website.