AT&T has said in an update that Mavenir will be part of its Open RAN vendor mix as it densifies its network to add capacity in busy urban environments.
A post from AT&T’s RAN Technology, and VP – Wireless Engineering & Construction, said that both Fujitsu and Mavenir would be supplying AT&T with 4T/4R TDD C-band radios and 4T/4R dual band FDD radios (B25/B66*) that can fit on urban lampposts and street furniture. RUs from both vendors will be managed by Ericsson’s RAN management platform – EIAP.
The numbers involved in such a densification are not insignificant. One analyst has previously estimated in comments to TMN that AT&T probably has around 10,000 poles across the USA currently using mid band spectrum and 2T2R that would need an update. “They would likely need to upgrade these to 4T4R and integrate to reduce the number of radios if they plan to add the C-band spectrum radios on these poles,” he added.
The operator had already announced Fujitsu as a supplier of midband micro RUs during November’s FYUZ event. Today’s release did not explicitly specify which products each vendor would be supplying, or in what balance of numbers.
The post did also state that the operator is continuing to look for opportunities to bring additional third-party radios into the network when needed”.
The addition of Mavenir as a further supplier within AT&T’s ecosystem will be a welcome boost for the company, which has suffered bad press in the past couple of weeks due to assessments of its financial position. That was followed up with the news – perhaps conveniently leaked – that Saudi Aramco Digital might be about to invest $1 billion in the company to help ease those issues. Further fuelling speculation, Aramco Digital’s CEO Tareq Amin updated his LinkedIn profile to state he is now CEO of “Confidential”, which could of course be nothing to do with Mavenir at all.
* (Band 25 = 1900 MHz; Band 66 = 1700 MHz Uplink / 2100 MHz downlink.)
