• Ericsson will introduce support for open fronthaul across its Cloud RAN and radio portfolios starting in 2024
• More than one million Ericsson radios in the field are hardware-prepared for open fronthaul
• Ericsson is driving the industry in all three areas of Open RAN architectures – cloudification, open management with automation, and open fronthaul

Ericsson  underlined its commitment to lead the industrialization of Open RAN and bring the benefits of cloud-based open network architecture to the industry, including support for open fronthaul in its Cloud RAN and radio portfolios.

Through its leadership in the O-RAN Alliance, Ericsson has together with the industry, now reached the critical milestones towards defining the next generation open fronthaul interface required to bring performance at scale to Open RAN.

Ericsson has deployed over one million radios that are hardware-ready for the next generation of open fronthaul technology and, with the new radio platforms released this year, it has a complete Open RAN-ready offering across its Massive MIMO and remote radio portfolios. In addition, Ericsson will introduce support for open fronthaul in its Cloud RAN portfolio, starting in 2024.

Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks at Ericsson, says: “We believe that the biggest revolution in future mobile networks is the introduction of cloud-based open networks, which will enable a move towards fully programmable mobile networks. We are enabling an open and growing ecosystem of innovation together with our customers and partners. Today we bring more details to our previously announced transition to the introduction of Open RAN support across our portfolio.”

Industry-scale Open RAN

Ericsson believes that future networks need to be increasingly resilient, open, sustainable, and intelligent. Open RAN plays an important role in achieving this vision, and Ericsson is leading the industrialization of the three pillars of Open RAN: cloudification, open fronthaul and open management for network programmability.

In a disaggregated environment, end-to-end system performance, automation using AI software extensions, and continuous development are essential for high performance. With the Ericsson Intelligent Automation Platform (EIAP), Ericsson is enabling multivendor network management, improving network performance and enhancing customer experience while enabling extensive RAN programmability to deliver operational savings. EIAP offers industrial scale automation for Cloud RAN, purpose-built and multi-vendor radio access networks together with an open, standards-based software development kit (SDK) that empowers and enables innovation from across the industry – service providers, third-party software vendors, and network providers.