OpenRAN allows operators to mix and match suppliers in their radio networks, posing a challenge to the likes of the ones that dominate the global telecoms equipment market with their proprietary technologies.

Moreover, Vodafone’s initiative will contribute to the European Union’s efforts to bolster its chip industry and double its share of global production to 20% after it lost ground to Asian and U.S. suppliers.

Santiago Tenorio, Vodafone’s director of network architecture, commented in an interview with Reuters that OpenRAN would enable the mobile operator to quickly add new digital services and to optimize networks using artificial intelligence (AI).

What OpenRAN do is to create interoperability between both software and hardware components of the radio access network.

The R&D centre is the first dedicated to advancing OpenRAN chip architecture. It will bring 50 people dedicated to OpenRAN together with 650 software engineers, architects and technicians in Malaga. Tenorio also noted that Vodafone would design silicon for ARM and RISC-V instruction sets as well as Intel x86. He added that Intel was up to three years ahead of rivals and had already played a key role in OpenRAN’s development.

While this partnership symbolizes the confluence between telecoms and Silicon Valley, concerns about customer data processing still remain crucial.

The deal between mobile operator Vodafone Group Plc and Alphabet Inc’s Google Cloud is set to last for six years. Representatives of both companies from Britain, Spain and the USA, will create a new cloud-based storage and analytics portal to host Vodafone’s data – a “Nucleus”.

Vodafone state that “Nucleus” will have the capability to process around 50 terabytes of data each day within the cloud. According to the statement, “Both companies will drive the use of reliable and secure data analytics, insights, and learning to support the introduction of new digital products and services for Vodafone customers simultaneously worldwide”.

Along with the storage and analytics portal, both companies will also develop a system called ‘Dynamo’ with the ability to extract and transport data across all the countries where Vodafone operates.