The rollout is the first deployment in Australia and is a milestone for Telstra as the firm looks to deliver 5G services to customers around the country.
As part of the deployment, Telstra and Ericsson have migrated two carrier frequencies 2600MHz and 3600MHz to the Cloud RAN infrastructure.
The first sites to receive 55 Cloud RAN technology are located on the Gold Coast, Queensland.
“This step in the validation and rollout of this technology is critical to ensure we get the most out of 5G now and in the future. It will allow us to roll out network capacity and new features faster while making our networks more intelligent, automated, flexible, reliable, and secure,” said Iskra Nikolova, Telstra executive for network and infrastructure.
“This is particularly important when it comes to making sure that areas of high demand, particularly large events and seasonal hotspots can operate at the high standard our customers expect.
“Our ongoing partnership with Ericsson has once again supported Telstra’s efforts to deliver a world-leading 5G experience for the Australian public.”
The two firms will continue to implement and optimise new network technology capabilities in the cloud-based architecture era. This will focus not just on the RAN software, frequencies and features but also on deployment and operational practices.
The commercial deployment follows the technology trial between the two in December last year, where Telstra and Ericsson unveiled the first Ericsson Cloud RAN 5G data call on Telstra’s commercial network – the first such successful trial in the southern hemisphere.
Telstra’s implementation of Ericsson’s Cloud RAN technology involves the virtualisation of the RAN baseband.
This allows both the Centralised Unit (CU) and Distributed Unit (DU) functions of Telstra network to be decoupled from the base station site and be located at a central site, allowing for more efficient utlisation of compute resources.
Telstra is the first in the world to use Ericsson’s Cloud Native Infrastructure solution (CNIS) for Cloud RAN in a live commercial 5G network.
CNIS is a bare metal infrastructure that is optimised for hosting cloud-native 5G applications both at central data centres and at the edge.
With Ericsson’s Cloud RAN running on CNIS, the combination reduces Telstra’s deployment and operational risks and ensures the best mobile network performance for Telstra’s customers.
Emilio Romeo, head of Ericsson, Australia and New Zealand said: “The flexibility provided by Ericsson’s Cloud RAN technology delivers a more open network architecture for Telstra, one that is fully independent of hardware solutions and easily scalable to meet evolving customer demand for optimal service performance now and into the future.
“As Ericsson’s Cloud RAN infrastructure is rolled out to more sites around the country, Telstra’s 5G network is set to offer even more capacity, reliability and performance to its Australian customers.”
