A white box base station, that is!
That’s right, home PC and business laptop provider, Dell, is taking big steps into the communications arena. At Mobile World Congress, it announced partnerships with Amdocs, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung and Qualcomm to accelerate the adoption of open, cloud-native 5G technologies in the telecom space.
“As an extension of our collaboration with Microsoft on Azure Operator Nexus, Dell intends to build an engineered system to further simplify telecom cloud network deployment and management, while lowering operational expenses,” the company said in an announcement at the event.
We asked Dell for more info on its telecom moves this week. The company said that key execs were out post-MWC and offered us slots next week. Fortunately, we don’t have to wait to add a little more detail to Dell’s incredible telco journey.
For instance, we know that Dell is already deep with Dish Wireless. Supplying servers for the greenfield operator to use in its self-made, white box 5G base stations.
Also, analyst Prakash Sangam told us recently that Dell is “supporting” Marvell’s Octeo10Fusion for virtual radio access network (vRAN)/OpenRAN L-1 accelerators. This is possibly part of Dell’s planned work with Nokia.
Watch this space for more details once those Dell folks return from their extended Barcelona vacations.