New Hampshire-based firm inks deal with Middle East telecom

Parallel Wireless continues it efforts to deploy OpenRAN

February 20, 2020

Jeff Feingold,

Shown at the announcement that Abu Dhabi-based telecom Eitslatat would be collaborating with Parallel Wireless of Nashua, NH, on a OpenRAN initiative in the Middle East, Asia and Africa are, from left: Hatem Bamatraf, chief technology officer, Etisalat; Khaled Abdulla, senior director, technology strategy, Etisalat; Rajesh Mishra, president and founder, Parallel Wireless; and, Amrit Heer, sales director, Parallel Wireless.

Nashua-based Parallel Wireless is continuing its push to widen the use of OpenRAN with the recent announcement of a new collaboration with Etisalat, an Abu Dhabi-based firm that has nearly 150 million wireless customers in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

OpenRAN (Open Radio Access Networks) is an initiative launched through the international Telecom Infra Project industry association that builds 2G, 3G and 4G Radio Access Networks based on a general-purpose vendor-neutral hardware and software-defined technology. Such an approach, proponents say, helps operators cut the cost of building mobile networks by lowering the barriers to work with new vendors and as well as costs. Using vendor-neutral hardware, the initiative aims to reduce the reliance on a small number of vendors by de-coupling the hardware and software components of the network, and decreasing the massive expenditure incurred on network infrastructure.

According to Parallel, Etisalat will be able to run the different technology generations simultaneously on the same base stations, providing commercial data and voice services to customers in both urban and rural locations.

The company says it offers the only “All G” OpenRAN solution, converging 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G on one unified software platform and removing the need to maintain legacy networks dedicated to a single technology.

In addition, Parallel says the OpenRAN approach will help reduce the complexity of deploying multi-vendor 5G systems.

Etisalat previously announced it was launching an open virtualized RAN initiative using technology from vendors including Altiostar, NEC and Cisco, among others, according to Fierce Wireless.

Last November, Parallel announced that South Africa-based MTN Group would begin deploying more than 5,000 sites across its 21 operations in Africa using its OpenRAN product to deliver 2G, 3G, and 4G services in areas that were previously unconnected. And in October, Vodafone said it would deploy an OpenRAN pilot with Parallel in Turkey and the Democratic Republic of Congo.