Nokia announced the launch of anyRAN to help mobile operators and enterprises extend their options for building and evolving their radio access networks.
Nokia anyRAN is designed to help mobile operators and enterprises extend their options for building and evolving their radio access networks. The software can run on any partner’s Cloud and Server infrastructure in addition to Nokia AirScale base stations and Nokia AirFrame servers.

This approach removes the complexity from deployments by allowing a mix of purpose-built, hybrid, and fully Cloud-based RAN solutions, enabling multi-level disaggregation at the Cloud Infrastructure layer and data center (server) hardware layer. Collaboration with partners ensures performance consistency of Cloud RAN with Nokia’s purpose-built RAN.

Nokia Cloud RAN SmartNIC, a Layer 1 (fronthaul) In-Line acceleration card integrates with all leading Cloud or server infrastructures. L1 acceleration needs specialized silicon with extreme computing capacity, which is beyond the capabilities of general-purpose processors.

Nokia Cloud RAN SmartNIC uses dedicated and optimized silicon technology, which is energy efficient and provides higher performance. Nokia and its partners have already successfully performed end-to-end 5G data calls (Layer 3 calls) in multi-vendor setups powered by Nokia’s solution.

While Nokia’s AnyRAN solution offers multi-level vertical disaggregation, Nokia also continues to serve the mobile operator and enterprise market with its optimized Nokia AirFrame OpenEdge server family. The enhanced AirFrame Open Edge server delivers a 50 percent performance boost compared to the system shown at Mobile World Congress 2022.

Nokia’s solutions offer network performance consistency between purpose-built AirScale baseband and Cloud RAN and secure the best possible feature performance parity, with the fastest time-to-market for cloud/hybrid networks.

Sue Rudd, Director Networks and Service Platforms at TechInsights, said: “Nokia’s anyRAN offers a solution with standard O-RAN fronthaul and 3GPP midhaul interfaces under seamless control that can operate across multiple Cloud partner data centers.”