Greenfield MNO 1&1 in Germany has launched its new mobile network, which is based on Open RAN technology with Huawei-free benefits.
Following in the footsteps of Rakuten in Japan and Dish in the US, 1&1 has seized the opportunity to build a mobile network from the ground up and is fully committed to Open RAN. Rakuten itself was announced as the main partner for the project in mid 2021 and, unsurprisingly, Altiostar software is part of the final mix. The Japanese theme continues to use NEC antennas, which 1&1 is keen to emphasize makes it "the only mobile network operator in Germany that does not use Huawei antennas."
Ralph Dommermuth, CEO of 1&1, said, "The launch of our Open RAN network underlines our position as a pioneer who is now providing evidence in Germany that the world's most modern network technology is fully functional." "Despite delays in recent months, we are still looking to meet our obligation to cover 50 percent of all households by the end of 2030 ahead of schedule. We hope to achieve this by commissioning some 12,600 radio masts and more than 500 regional data centers."
Presumably Dommermuth was referring to the Vantage issue when he mentioned the delay, and you have to wonder why he thought it was worth reporting. Maybe things didn't go exactly as planned and he wanted to accomplish some shirking of responsibility when he had the chance. For now, the announcement only mentions the construction of three antenna sites and another 50 radio masts, but it expects to meet the first interim goal of 1,000 radio masts at some point this year.
Other vendors named are servers from Dell and Supermicro, routers from Cisco, software from Mavenir and antennas from CCI. Overall, this does seem to fulfill Open RAN's promise to open up RAN to more vendors, but if 1&1 has the same profile on all of its sites, you have to wonder how much better it is than it is to have just one vendor doing everything.
