NASHUA, N.H. — U.S.-based cloud-native network software developer Parallel Wireless, a member of the OpenRAN Project Group, announced Monday it has deployed hundreds of programmable, virtualized 4G OpenRAN sites to deliver mobile broadband in Latin America through Internet para Todos Perú.
Internet para Todos Perú (IpT Peru) is an open access wholesale rural mobile infrastructure operator jointly supported by Telefónica, Facebook, IDB Invest and CAF (Development Bank of Latin America). First announced in February 2019 and launched in May 2019, IpT Peru aims to bring mobile broadband to users in remote regions of Peru, where high investment and operational costs, and the complexity of low-density deployments, have prevented mobile network operators (MNOs) from bringing coverage to these areas, says the Parallel Wireless news release.
As part of its goal to deliver mobile broadband to remote populations, IpT Peru has deployed hundreds of new sites in Peru using Parallel Wireless’s fully virtualized and automated OpenRAN architecture, the news release says.
Parallel Wireless says its technology brings much more flexibility and agility to the deployment and management of a telco access network. The Parallel Wireless OpenRAN Controller creates a multi-vendor, multi-operator, open ecosystem of interoperable components for the various radio access network (RAN) elements and from different vendors, the release says. All new radio units are self-configured by the software, reducing the need for manual intervention. The self-optimization capability automates optimization across different RANs in IpT Peru’s network, utilizing available RAN data from all RAN types (macros and small cells). This creates an open business model, where MNOs can partner with local companies that focus on rural coverage to enable lean cost structure that fits the business case of targeting the long tail of the unconnected and operational simplicity, the release says.
To help manage the incremental levels of complexity created by openness and virtualization, IpT Peru, Telefónica and Parallel Wireless have defined and implemented an operating model built on the principles of the data centre, with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), that helps to accelerate taking new functionalities to market faster and safer than ever before, in an easy and automated way, the news release says.
The predictive and automated CI/CD-based approach devised by Telefónica and utilized to certify the Parallel Wireless 4G OpenRAN Controller and network software suite, in contrast to the legacy reactive optimization approach, improves time-to-market of new software features and user experience, the release says.
“We have selected Parallel Wireless OpenRAN to help us reduce our network deployment costs through disaggregation of hardware and software, RAN and core virtualization and network automation with real-time SON [self-organizing network] for deployments across Latin America and 5G readiness,” said Renan Ruiz, chief technology officer at IpT, in the news release. “Telefónica was a pioneer in adopting cloud-native architectures and CI/CD models. With continuous delivery and deployment enabled by Parallel Wireless software, we are able to automate network deployments, [and] make it an easy, push-button operation to deliver in our network the newest features and the newest functions. That allows us to give our customers new capabilities at the speed of software.”
