Image: Lehtikuva/Markku Ulander via Reuters

Finland’s Nokia on Tuesday became the first major telecommunications equipment maker to commit to adding open interfaces in its products that will allow mobile operators to build networks that are not tied to a vendor.

The new technology, dubbed Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN), aims to reduce reliance on any one vendor by making every part of a telecoms network interoperable and allowing operators to choose different suppliers for different components.

Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei supply most of the equipment for building telecoms networks and mobile operators can only pick one for each part of their network.

As part of the implementation plan, Nokia plans to deploy Open RAN interfaces in its baseband and radio units, a spokesman said. An initial set of Open RAN functionalities will become available this year, while the full suite of interfaces is expected to be available in 2021, the company said.

Nokia, unlike other vendors, had been promising to participate in the development of open RAN technology and has joined several industry alliances.  — Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Tarmo Virki, (c) 2020 Reuters