Paul Sandle

MALAGA, Spain (Reuters). – Vodafone has teamed together with Intel Corp (NASDAQ:) with other silicon vendors in designing its own chips architecture for the OpenRAN network tech, which aims to challenge traditional telecoms equipment providers.

OpenRAN allows radio operators to match and mix suppliers, challenging the dominance of Ericsson (BSI:), Huawei (NYSE :), and Nokia(NYSE :). These companies dominate the international telecoms equipment market using their proprietary technology.

OpenRAN development has gained more prominence after some countries banned or discouraged use of Huawei’s Huawei technology in their national networks.

Vodafone (NASDAQ:)’s initiative, based at its digital innovation and R&D centre in Malaga, will also contribute to the European Union’s efforts to bolster its chip industry and double its share of global production to 20% after it lost ground to Asian and U.S. suppliers.

Santiago Tenorio from Vodafone, director of network architecture told Reuters OpenRAN will allow Vodafone to rapidly add digital services to its networks and optimise them using artificial intelligence (AI).

He stated, “It will bring disruption innovation back into the network.”

OpenRAN brings interoperability to the software-hardware components of the radio access system, increasing the supply base and decreasing the barriers of entry.

Vodafone activated the first UK 5G OpenRAN website carrying live customer traffic, in Bath, Western England earlier this month. This kicks off a deployment of 2,500 sites that Vodafone expects to have completed by 2027.

The R&D centre – the first dedicated to advancing OpenRAN chip architecture – will bring 50 people dedicated to OpenRAN together with 650 software engineers, architects and technicians in the Spanish city, where the British company is investing 225 million euros ($251 million) over five years. On Monday, it will be open.

Tenorio stated that Vodafone will design silicon for ARM instruction sets and RISC–V instruction sets, as well as Intel x86. However, he said Intel was three years ahead and played a crucial role in OpenRAN’s creation.

The company stated that the project has been joined by 20 vendors, including Broadcom (NASDAQ) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ), as well as Lime Microsystems (ARM), with the other half coming from Europe.

($1 = 0.8960 euros)