Vodafone, one of the world’s largest telecom operators and an early proponent of the Telecom Infra Project’s OpenRAN initiative, says it started trialing the technology in the United Kingdom. The operator already demonstrated OpenRAN technology in South Africa and Turkey, and may soon expand the trials to other European countries.

Vodafone claims this is the first instance of OpenRAN technology trials on the European continent. The operator has also initiated trials of the technology in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique.

The primary goal for Vodafone, at this stage, is to lower the cost of network equipment in a bid to make wireless coverage in rural communities more economically feasible. However, the operator has been trialing OpenRAN technology in urban areas as well.

“We are pleased with trials of OpenRAN and are ready to fast track it into Europe as we seek to actively expand our vendor ecosystem,” Vodafone Group CEO Nick Read said in a prepared statement. “OpenRAN improves the network economics by enabling us to reach more people in rural communities and that supports our goal to build digital societies in which no one is left behind.”

Network operators are acutely aware of the competitive lock that companies like Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Huawei, and a few smaller vendors have on base stations. And they are increasingly embracing virtualized and open radio access networks to boost competition for the equipment that powers their networks.

Ericsson and Huawei are the primary 4G and 5G radio access network suppliers for Vodafone today.

Vodafone is working with some new vendors to achieve this outcome, including Mavenir, Parallel Wireless, and Lime Microsystems. Mavenir, a Dallas-based company, recently broadened its push into OpenRAN with the opening of a new innovation center in Stockholm.

Parallel Wireless separately announced that Vodafone has been using its SDN for an OpenRAN pilot in Turkey and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Vodafone is already transmitting commercial traffic, including 2G and 4G LTE services on the same base stations, in rural and urban parts of Turkey, according to a Parallel Wireless spokesperson.

The vendor claims that its approach to OpenRAN is different because it enables operators to replace legacy 2G systems with fully virtualized technology that can simultaneously run 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE services on the same base station. Moreover, because the architecture is defined by software it can also be upgraded to 5G with a software upgrade, according to the vendor.

Vodafone did not describe the extent of these OpenRAN trials so it's unclear how many base stations are involved thus far. Nonetheless, the operator remains an ardent supporter of the benefits of disaggregating hardware from software and will likely continue to trumpet those goals as 5G deployments gain momentum and bills come due for new equipment.