Blog: North American operators opine on open RAN - Mobile World Live 16 DEC 2020 It’s no longer just trials and talk: open RAN deals and deployments are slowly picking up steam. In 2019, MTN Group detailed plans to deploy 5,000 open RAN sites. There was even more activity in 2020, with Bharti Airtel pushing Altiostar’s open virtual RAN software live in its network in April; Vodafone UK pledging to deploy at least 2,600 compatible sites by 2027; and Telefonica targeting rollout of thousands of nodes across its footprint over the next five years. Earlier this month, KDDI tapped Fujitsu to supply radios for a virtualised 5G network. And then, of course, there are Rakuten Mobile and Dish Network, which are pretty much exclusively relying on the approach for their greenfield networks.