Dell Technologies Inc. said at the MWC 2023, the former Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona today that it’s aiming to become a “unifying force” in the telecommunications industry with the launch of its new Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Community.

It’s made up of multiple telecom partners and communications service providers that aim to leverage the Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab to design and bring open telecom solutions to market more quickly, the company explained. In addition, community members will develop and share their telecom ecosystem knowledge, iterate on new ideas together, and increase the speed at which they deliver new solutions to help network operators better make money from open networks.

The announcement comes days after Dell introduced a host of new hardware platforms designed to help telecom firms build cloud-native, open radio access network or RAN architectures that use nonproprietary subcomponents from a variety of different suppliers.

As Dell explained, CSPs are increasingly turning to open platforms that enable them to leverage any combination of hardware and software in order to customize their networks for specific needs. However, Open RAN networks require certain features from infrastructure and software to support the most demanding and business-critical workloads, Dell said. At the same time, Open RAN deployments must be extremely reliable at large scale, while delivering the same or superior price performance benefits as legacy networks.

With those goals in mind, a number of Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Community members have already collaborated with Dell on new offerings aimed at accelerating Open RAN price performance for CSPs. For instance, Nokia Corp. has partnered with Dell to integrate and validate a new offering that combines its 5G Cloud RAN software and Cloud RAN SmartNIC in-line Layer 1 accelerator card using Dell’s recently announced open infrastructure, including its new PowerEdge servers. The companies plan to share engineering and research and development resources to bring a new virtual RAN offering to market, using the Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab as the center for testing and validation.

As previously reported on SiliconANGLE, Broadcom is a key component supplier to Dell’s line of servers for the telecommunications market. The megatrend in servers is the shift from a CPU-centric architecture to one that is connect-centric where supporting components are increasingly responsible for performance and cost efficiency.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm Technologies Inc. is working with Dell to build a next-generation 5G virtualized distributed unit. It will combine Dell PowerEdge XR8000 and XR5610 servers designed for telecom and edge use cases with Qualcomm’s X100 5G RAN Accelerator Card with commercial-grade Layer 1 software. According to Dell, the combination provides network operators with an extremely high performance, cost-effective and energy-efficient platform for deploying virtualized and Open RAN technologies.

Another partner is Amdocs Ltd., which is working with Dell to help accelerate the deployment of 5G Stand-Alone core networks. The collaboration involves pairing Dell’s PowerEdge R760 services with Amdocs’ policy and charging capabilities to create a “cloud-native 5G core policy and charging control solution” for on-premises cloud environments. It will make it possible for companies to quickly deploy an automated and validated 5G SA network with various partners across open infrastructure, Dell explained.

Finally, Dell said it’s working with Juniper Networks Inc. on a certified offering that will give companies a direct path to server consolidation and power reduction at cell sites. The companies are creating a hybrid network infrastructure that comprises Dell’s Open RAN-compliant servers and Juniper’s physical routers and Cloud-Native Router software. According to Dell, the main benefit of this offering is that it will help CSPs to reduce their carbon footprints by lowering energy consumption.

Dell promised this is just the beginning of its collaboration with telecom industry partners as it seeks to accelerate the adoption of open 5G networking technologies and solve key industry challenges.

Photo: Dell