Vodafone Idea, the second-largest operator in India, again turned to Mavenir to expand open RAN deployments to TDD and massive MIMO sites in selected cities this year.

The operator first deployed the vendor’s cloud-native open RAN software on multiple cell sites, which started supporting commercial traffic in December 2019.

Vodafone Idea claims it has the largest massive MIMO deployment in India.

In a statement, Vishant Vora, Vodafone Idea CTO, said after disaggregating key core network elements, moving to disaggregate the RAN is a natural next step, adding: “We are happy to partner Mavenir for this initiative, which has a potential to not only reduce costs but also create exciting new capabilities customised to our business requirements.”

Mavenir also is a supplier for Rakuten Mobile’s virtualised wireless network in Japan.

The greenfield operator, the fourth player in Japan, recently announced it is partnering with TPG Telecom in Singapore to run open RAN trials on a new network.

Earlier this week the vendor also announced a deal to supply US 5G newcomer Dish Network with open RAN kit.