Mavenir-Axiata Achieve First Live Commercial Open vRAN Deployment

Mavenir and Axiata Group Berhad announced on Monday that they had achieved full integration in a live environment, using the MAVair O-RAN based solution for Open RAN.

The deployment has happened in three properties (Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia), where Axiata has selected in various scenarios, some sites from the legacy incumbent vendors and replaced them with the MAVair Open vRAN solution from Mavenir.  

Sites are connected with non-ideal backhaul (microwave links), and specifically in some cases with Satellite connectivity, being the first-ever in Open vRAN solutions in the world, the release read.

The MAVair Open vRAN is capable of performing in any type of environment, from rural and urban, with a very flexible architecture and also adapt to the existing environment providing an ideal solution for new applications like Radio Intelligent Controller to increase capacity and optimize the radio and software resources.

Pardeep Kohli, Mavenir president and CEO said, “Mavenir is delighted to work with Axiata on their radio network transformation initiative. Together, we have achieved excellent results in Axiata’s commercial network and sites deployed in rural, suburban and urban locations, proving the extreme flexibility of Open vRAN.”

“We are proud to be among the first to deploy TIP’s Evenstar 4G radios in live commercial Open RAN environments,” said Thomas Hundt, Executive Vice President – Technology at Axiata Group Berhad.

Mavenir is the Network Software Provider building the future of networks with cloud-native software that runs on any cloud and transforms the way the world connects and Axiata Group Berhad is a leading communication Service Provider in Asia.

MAVair O-RAN, the uniqueness of the solution is the use for the first time in commercial service of the Evenstar 4G RRU, produced by the Telecom Infra Project, with 7.2 O-RAN interfaces and Open RAN fully virtualised.

Mavenir is building the future of networks and pioneering advanced technology, focusing on the vision of a single, software-based automated network that runs on any cloud. As the industry's only end-to-end, cloud-native network software provider, Mavenir is focused on transforming the way the world connects, accelerating software network transformation for 250+ Communications Service Providers in over 120 countries, which serve more than 50 per cent of the world’s subscribers.

On the other hand, as one of the leading telecommunications groups in Asia in pursuit of its vision to be The Next Generation Digital Champion by 2024, Axiata has transformed itself from a holding entity with a portfolio of pure-play mobile assets into a Triple Core Strategy driven business focusing on Digital Telco, Digital Businesses and Infrastructure.

Within ASEAN and South Asia, the Group has controlling stakes in market-leading mobile and fixed operators in the region including 'Celcom' in Malaysia, 'XL' in Indonesia, 'Dialog' in Sri Lanka, 'Robi' in Bangladesh, 'Smart' in Cambodia and 'Ncell' in Nepal. Axiata is actively spearheading efforts to transform its mobile-centric operations into digital converged companies.

Axiata Digital, the digital services arm of Axiata is focused on two digital business verticals namely Digital Financial Services ('Boost', ‘Aspirasi’) and Digital Analytics & AI ('ADA').