Airspan looks to disrupt 5G network economics with open RAN platforms

Successful integration of Mimosa Networks gives combined company broader market reach
As operators around the world strategize and invest in continued enhancement of LTE networks and push to deploy and commercialize 5G, the way networks are architected is fundamentally changing. To flexibly provision capacity and prepare for new 5G use cases and applications, carriers are looking to virtualization to help balance performance and cost in increasingly dense network environments.
To that density point, many 5G networks will use sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave frequencies. Given the limited propagation characteristics of the latter, this means more small cells blanketing coverage areas. Another mega-trend shaping network evolution is the push for opening up the radio access network to provide multi-vendor interoperability at radio sites. During Mobile World Congress Barcelona, Airspan VP of Strategy and Marketing Damiano Coletti gave RCR Wireless News an update on how the company’s 5G portfolio supports these shifting market demands. “We launched our Air 5G open architecture vRAN platform, which supports millimeter wave and sub-6 GHz with massive MIMO, so we’re providing macro performance and power. And we’re providing an open interface and open ecosystem so operators can choose what software to put into their network. We’re trying to disrupt the economics of [how]networks get deployed.”