By Oystein Bergmann, Correspondent Scandinavia

Ericsson has been selected by KDDI CORPORATION and SoftBank Corp.  as one of the vendors to help deploy Japan’s first Multi-Operator Radio Access Network (MORAN).  Ericsson’s network sharing solution brings new, flexible and efficient ways to deploy networks to both communications service providers while keeping both companies’ own operations and management capabilities.  

Ericsson equipment supports network sharing on both TDD (Time Division Duplex) and FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) as well as 4G/LTE and 5G New Radio (NR).  The solution consists of Ericsson Radio System  products such as RAN Compute (base band) , radio and transport – with the powerful system on a chip, Ericsson Silicon, bringing innovative various solutions such as Ericsson Spectrum Sharing and Ericsson Uplink Booster.

Ericsson’s network sharing solution can also be applied to industrial or campus sites, where the radio access network may be shared between the onsite network and the public network, opening up more possibilities to support industry digitalization.

Ericsson network equipment will be shared by the two service providers, bringing cost-optimized solutions as well as faster and denser 5G network deployment.  KDDI and SoftBank will particularly focus on quickly building robust 5G network leveraging Ericsson Radio System products and solutions for multiple-bands. Ericsson’s future-proof network-sharing solution will significantly contribute to their nationwide network deployment of 5G and beyond.   Ericsson and the service providers have completed verifications and started to deploy the solution commercially.

Vice President & Managing Officer, Technology Planning, KDDI Tatsuo Sato says: “We are pleased to work closely with SoftBank and Ericsson to accelerate 5G network deployment. With the MORAN solution, we will be among the first to offer excellent 5G experiences to our customers.”

Senior Vice President and CNO, SoftBank, Tomohiro Sekiwa says: “To provide 5G coverage to our customers across Japan with extraordinary speed, we are proactively working with KDDI and Ericsson.  The MORAN solution is key to this success and we have high expectations for this effort.”

Senior Vice President, Head of Market Area North East Asia, Ericsson, Chris Houghton says: “We are thrilled to contribute to the efforts of our two important customers, KDDI and SoftBank, to build Multi-Operator RAN for the first time in Japan. We look forward to further supporting this imperative mission to build the country’s significant network infrastructure.”