Vodafone, a major telecom player and EdgeQ, a leader in 5G wireless infrastructure, have shaken hands to develop the next-gen, software programmable 5G ORAN platforms. The companies are leveraging ORAN (Open-RAN) to deliver the world’s first open programmable, fully in-line L1 acceleration card capable of supporting multi-carrier, massive MIMO. What’s interesting about this platform is that it converges the entire physical 4G/5G layer onto a single card for addressing the 5G macro cell deployments. “Vodafone remains committed as a market leader in driving massive 5G ORAN deployments. We see EdgeQ enriching the ORAN ecosystem with its high-capacity in-line L1 acceleration card, bringing fresh thinking and innovation to the overall industry. EdgeQ enables operators like Vodafone to simply operationalize ORAN,” said Paco Martin, Head of OpenRAN, Network Architecture, Vodafone. EdgeQ’s accelerator card converges connectivity and computing in a compact and scalable platform, said a release. By integrating 5G, 4G, cloud and networking functionalities into a single chip, EdgeQ enables a highly dense and scalable ORAN solution which can support multi-carrier, multi-tenet, and multi-users. “Our partnership with Vodafone elevates the aspirations of OpenRAN. We are able to assemble best-of-breed hardware and software solutions to set new industry benchmarks. This in turn enables operators to embrace a holistic 4G-5G platform that is frictionlessly scalable, massively integrated, but yet openly customizable,” said Vinay Ravuri, CEO and Founder of EdgeQ.
