O2 Telefónica (AKA Telefonica Deutschland) and NEC Corporation have created Germany’s first Open and virtual RAN small cells in one of Munich’s most influential business districts. Meanwhile, the German mobile operator has also broken new ground with 5G monetising specialist Matrixx Software, which is using Google Cloud Confidential Computing to help it get a return on its infrastructure investments.
The new small cell installation means that Bavarians in Munich’s trendy Glockenbachviertel are getting customer experiences from a technology that’s even younger and hipper than them. By increasing the capacity of the network they have improved the user’s experience in this dense urban area by the river Ivar.
NEC integrated a diversity of vendors, with Airspan Networks’ Airspeed plug-and-play system talking to Rakuten Symphony’s Open vRAN software for O2 small cells to complement and the metropolitan macro cells created by a network of multiple manufacturers.
The combination of Open RAN small cells and macro cells will help 5G to create a close-knit community of comms kit from manufacturers that hail from all parts of the world, according to Matthias Sauder, director of mobile access and transport at Telefonica Deutschland.
“Small cells built on Open RAN help to complete the delivery of granular, high-quality connectivity in dense urban areas,” said Sauder, ”NEC became our partner with its underlying technological background and experiences of Open RAN technologies.”
O2 Telefónica has also launched B2B services run by 5G monetising specialist Matrixx Software, which is using Google Cloud Confidential Computing in respect of the high standards for security and data privacy demanded in Germany.
O2 Telefónica is the first to run Matrixx’s Converged Charging System on Google Cloud’s Confidential Computing. O2 Telefónica’s first attempts to commercialise 5G with this technology will be a new digital commerce platform for its digital B2B office systems, followed by an all-IP fixed network, a software defined wide area network and some unspecified 5G systems.
“We are on a mission to better serve Germany’s dynamic and fast-moving enterprise market,” said Mallik Rao, the CTIO at O2 Telefónica. “The flexibility of Matrixx and the scalability and privacy of Google Cloud [will provide] our B2B customers with unmatched confidentiality delivered by a highly configurable charging product running on a massively scalable public cloud platform.”
O2 Telefónica’s new B2B service aims to connect with value-chain partners and personalise the offering for customers. Matrixx on Google Cloud was the option for achieving that objective, according to Rao. By fully encrypting all data, O2 Telefónica’s partners can do a much better job of serving enterprise customers.
“O2 Telefónica has raised the bar on what’s possible for telco providers,” said Glo Gordon, CEO at Matrixx Software, “we’re honoured to support its technology transformation.”
“This new offering from O2 Telefónica will help German businesses more effectively,” said George Nazi, VP of telco, media, and entertainment industry solutions at Google Cloud.