After non-standalone 5G, relying on 4G infrastructure, Orange is focusing its efforts on the deployment of its private 5G networks stand-alone aimed at businesses. The Finnish group Nokia was selected to carry out this project in France.
Orange is continuing to develop its 5G network in France and Europe. In this context, the French operator has just announced the suppliers selected to ensure the deployment of its private 5G networks. stand-alone aimed at businesses.
In France, Orange has selected the Finnish group Nokia, which is already deploying the non-autonomous 5G network, relying on the existing 4G infrastructure, with its Swedish rival Ericsson. Nokia has also been asked to carry out the same mission in Slovakia and will have to guarantee the management of user data (Subscriber Data Management) in all the European countries in which Orange operates.
Ericsson and Oracle also selected
For its part, Ericsson has been chosen to deploy 5G networks stand-alone of the French group in Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg and Poland. In addition, it is the American giant Oracle which will be in charge of the signaling and routing of the 5G core in all the European countries where Orange is present.
No Huawei on the horizon therefore, the Chinese firm having been banned from the deployment of 5G networks in several European countries under pressure from the United States. In France, an “anti-Huawei” law was even adopted in 2019 to gradually exclude the Shenzhen firm from telecom equipment in France. However, Orange did not suffer too much from the consequences of this legislative text, since the operator did not use Huawei’s services in its networks in France, unlike SFR and Bouygues Telecom, whose networks depend heavily on the Chinese equipment supplier.
These 5G networks stand-alone are totally independent of 4G, hence their name (the English term “stand alone” means “autonomous”). They will be installed directly within the premises of the players concerned, above all ports and industrial zones. In addition to the increase in throughput that must be provided by 5G, these installations will allow a significant reduction in latency. They are also designed to withstand the “network slicing”i.e. the compartmentalization of the network between different tasks and/or connected devices, according to the needs required for each of them.