Vodafone says it has begun commercial trials of the Disaggregated Cell Site Gateway (DCSG) platform developed within the Telecom Infra Project (TIP). The trial, run by Vodacom South Africa in that country, seeks to measure the DCSG’s ability to support live 4G and 5G mobile networks and interoperate with Vodacom’s current radio access network (RAN) providers. The DCSG will be deployed in urban, rural, and ultra-rural areas as part of the trial.
As its name implies, the DCSG combines open, disaggregated white box hardware with open operating systems for use within an SDN environment (see “Telecom Infra Project targets disaggregated cell site gateways”). TIP developed the platform within its Open Optical & Packet Transport (OOPT) Project Group in collaboration with Vodafone and Facebook. Orange, Telefónica, and TIM Brazil have backed the project as well, with Telefónica launching deployments late last year (see “Telefónica rolls out Telecom Infra Project’s Disaggregated Cell Site Gateway”).
Vodafone says this latest trial follows a series of tests over the past six months using white box hardware from Edgecore Networks and a network operating system from Infinera. “We are extremely excited about the potential of the DCSG solution. This promises to broaden our supplier market, expedite the development of new features, reduce capital expenditure and improve operational efficiencies,” commented Beverly Ngwenya, CTO of Vodacom South Africa.
"Proving the commercial viability – of TIP’s DCSG will help create a more robust and diverse supply chain, benefitting the global telecoms industry. The DCSG solution has shown very promising results and we are very pleased by the positive response from the industry so far,” added Eva Rossi, head of Vodafone Group’s transport networks team.
For related articles, visit the 5G Mobile Topic Center.
For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer’s Guide.
To stay abreast of fiber network deployments, subscribe to Lightwave’s Service Providers and Datacom/Data Center newsletters.