MILPITAS, CA – February 28^th, 2022 – Anuta Networks, a leading network automation solution provider, announced today that a new North American mobile network operator has selected its closed-loop automation platform (ATOM) to accelerate the first 5G Standalone (SA) deployment built from the ground up with Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) as a Service. The scale is expansive, covering 50,000 sites nationwide, spanning 100s of thousands of network devices and servers. The ATOM solution eliminates configuration and integration touchpoints, develops customizable workflows that reduce manual errors, and increases productivity for the carrier’s network engineers.

Globally, the 3GPP 5G-New Radio (NR) standard is being widely adopted given its significant performance improvement over LTE (up to 20x faster), low latency (< 5ms), and vastly improved security and device scale support. As a result, operators and service providers will be able to launch many disruptive services supporting emerging technologies such as IoT, VR, and AR. The O-RAN Alliance has also emerged as a driving force in facilitating the implementation of open interfaces and APIs, flexible domestic vendor choice, and interoperability.

The disaggregation inherent in the O-RAN architecture allows service providers to choose best-of-breed vendors for each of the RU, gNodeb (DU/CU), Near-RT, and Non-RT RIC/SMO components while leveraging virtualization on Commercial-off-the-shelf servers (COTS). This approach accelerates innovation and can lower infrastructure capital expense, but it introduces operational challenges, especially when manual processes are followed.

For example, a cell-site activation typically requires 50+ manual steps, spanning applications across a dozen or more vendors that provide the necessary hardware, software, and services. In the best-case scenario, when all processes are streamlined, manual activation can consume 26 hours per site, mandating network automation.

Any viable network automation platform must support cell site onboarding, including transport configuration and provisioning of multi-vendor network solutions. There are many procedures including bare metal server provisioning, workload provisioning, inventory update, and lifecycle management of CNFs (O-RU, O-DU, O-CU, IMS, AMF, SMF, etc.) hosted on AWS local zones and regions. In addition, automation needs to support multi-tenancy, reporting, and analytics at a massive scale.

Anuta Networks ATOM delivers network and server automation, network slice provisioning for eMBB, uRLLC, and mMTC applications, collects telemetry and delivers assurance and closed-loop remediation through a single platform. The cloud-native solution supports an astounding 45+ vendors and 150+ platforms, including physical, virtual, and cloud-native network functions.