MWC22: Orange partners Ericsson, Nokia and Oracle for standalone 5G

Telecoms operator Orange has selected suppliers for its 5G standalone (SA) networks in Europe.

The firm has selected Ericsson’s 5G core network for Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg and Poland and Nokia’s 5G core standalone network for France and Slovakia.

The mobile giant has also added Oracle Communications 5G core signalling and routing in all countries.

Standalone 5G connects the 5G Radio directly to the 5G core network, and the control signalling does not depend on 4G networks, unlike most existing 5G deployments

Orange said that the deployment of standalone 5G will enable the future development of value-added, on-demand, and customised services for its customers in all sectors of the economy.

The technology promises to provide additional capacity and deliver much lower latency for certain use cases including Industry 4.0, industrial IoT, commercial augmented and VR.

Orange said that it would offer two solutions for enterprise customers – a virtual private network on Orange’s public network, and a hybrid private network.

The second option relies on shared equipment in the Orange network and dedicated equipment at the customer’s own site for critical flows and data.

The French telco heralded 2022 as “a year of preparation, testing and deployment” to facilitate future commercial launches from 2023.

The firms SA 5G technology is currently available for learning, testing, and innovating with interested companies at Orange 5G Lab sites and is deployable globally on demand for B2B customers with Orange Business Service’s private network solutions.

Orange added that it is mobilising experts and setting up a Network Integration Factory to test and validate technical chains, the performance of end-to-end services and to conduct tests with users.