Vodafone is ramping its open radio access network (RAN) push, scoring new deals with operators and vendors, and setting the stage for a commercial trial in Germany beginning next year.

The mobile telecom giant is partnering with Japan’s NTT DoCoMo to harmonize their open RAN test processes. This is targeted at reducing redundancy and costs for vendors in test environments.

The efforts will include tying together their respective lab environments. Vodafone has an open RAN research center in Newbury, United Kingdom, which was one of the carrier’s first 5G markets, and NTT DoCoMo has one in Yokosuka, Japan.

The two are also sharing efforts on the service management orchestrator component and the RAN intelligent controller (RIC) platform to map out future updates and the underlying software architecture. This is all geared toward lowering overall development, deployment, and operation costs.

“The collective R&D power of Vodafone and DoCoMo will lower the entry barrier for many more companies across Europe and Asia wishing to build open RAN networks,” Vodafone CTO Johan Wibergh noted in a statement.

Vodafone’s open RAN efforts so far have been mostly focused on collaboration with European operators. This includes work last year headed by the Telecom Infrastructure Project (TIP) to facilitate open RAN trials and deployments. That group was founded by Facebook, Nokia, Intel, Deutsche Telekom, and SK Telecom in 2016.

Vodafone also added Nokia, Samsung, and Marvell, and boosted its work with Qualcomm toward open RAN silicon development.

Nokia is adding its ReefShark system-on-chip (SoC) technology that it developed with Marvell to support commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) servers to power open RAN infrastructure. ReefShark is Nokia’s layer-one processing platform. Vodafone and Nokia plan to demonstrate an open RAN baseband system early next year.

Samsung is doing similar work, though with greater input from Marvell. Samsung will integrate Marvell’s Octeon SoC accelerator technology into its virtualized RAN (vRAN) software to power open RAN infrastructure.

Qualcomm is boosting its work with Vodafone, laying out plans to develop, test, and integrate 5G distributed units (DUs) and radio units (RUs) with massive multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) capabilities. This will lead toward 5G open RAN infrastructure using Qualcomm’s X100 5G RAN Accelerator Card and its QRU100 5G RAN platform.

This work builds on initial plans announced last year to develop technical blueprints for vendors to construct open RAN equipment.

Vodafone early this year launched a new facility in Malaga, Spain, targeted at developing silicon for open RAN. That facility will be staffed with 50 open RAN research and development specialists, joining 650 software engineers, architects, and technicians. The company pledged to invest about $250 million in the center through 2027 as it pursues additional development in edge computing, private networks, IoT, 5G applications, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Vodafone is also pulling Samsung into a 5G open RAN pilot scheduled to begin early next year in Germany. The trial will use Samsung open RAN equipment that is compliant with The Open RAN MoU group.

The German pilot will take place in the German states of South East Bavaria and North East Lower Saxony. It builds on an initial field test in Plauen, Germany, earlier this year. Vodafone said it plans a wider rollout of open RAN equipment in Germany over the next several years.

The latest open RAN plans further what has been aggressive moves by European countries and operators to better secure domestic networks and expand the vendor base.

The U.K. government, for instance, in mid-2020 mandated that all network equipment from China-based vendor Huawei be removed by 2027. That led European operators like Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, and Telefónica to push toward open RAN platforms in an attempt to expand and diversify their vendor options.

The operators signed an agreement to individually and jointly commit to deploy the technology, which separates hardware from software in telecommunications networks with open interfaces. Mobile carriers are especially interested in open RAN because it is framed as an alternative to the proprietary nature of RAN and the effective monopoly enjoyed by a trio of global RAN suppliers.

UPDATED: This story has been updated to clarify the founding of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP).