Finnish telecom operator Elisa and Nokia have completed what they describe as Europe's first commercial Cloud RAN deployment in Espoo, Finland. The rollout means that Elisa will be able to deploy Nokia's Cloud RAN solution alongside its existing purpose-built networks in hybrid environments, paving the way for a transition to full cloud-native networks.
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Details of the Cloud RAN Deployment
The deployment included Nokia's AirScale Massive MIMO radios, baseband software, and AI-driven MantaRay network management, integrated with Dell XR8620 servers and Red Hat OpenShift. This setup supported seamless 5G voice and data calls while ensuring scalability, performance consistency, and energy efficiency, Nokia stated on Thursday.
Elisa is advancing its network cloudification efforts and extending this transformation from the network core towards the access network. Nokia highlighted that with Cloud RAN, Elisa can shift the network computing power closer to the customers, whose network usage is transforming closer to the network edge. AI-powered applications are expected to accelerate the demand for edge computing in the future.
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Key Stakeholders' Perspectives
Elisa's Chief Technology Officer remarked, "This successful Cloud RAN deployment with Nokia is another important step on our cloudification which started with cloudifying the network core and edge, and now includes the radio access network."
The Vice president of Telco, Media, Entertainment and Edge Ecosystem, Red Hat, commented: "Cloud RAN's significance lies not only in providing an efficient and flexible way to deploy applications and derive value at the edge but also in boosting collaboration and innovation across the ecosystem."
Head of Cloud RAN at Nokia commented: "This successful collaboration with Elisa confirms that our Cloud RAN solution is ready for commercial deployment. Under our anyRAN approach, we work very closely with strategic partners like Red Hat and bring together best-in-class partner solutions to offer true flexibility and scalability to operators and enterprises."
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6G Era and Autonomous Networks
"Deploying the first commercial 5G cloud network in Europe puts Elisa in a strong position while moving towards the 6G era – which is predicted to be increasingly cloud-native. Additionally, cloudification plays a key role in Elisa's journey towards self-driving and self-healing autonomous networks," the companies concluded.
