VodafoneThree Explains Why Open RAN Lost Out to Ericsson and Nokia in the UK

VodafoneThree’s chief network officer has told analysts that the operator abandoned open RAN in the UK because the technology’s roadmap could not hit the site and spectrum deadlines attached to its merger approval. Andrea Dona said the Competition and Markets Authority set strict dates when it cleared the Vodafone and Three combination at the end of 2024, describing what followed as a difficult decision to drop open RAN in the UK network for the time being.

Before the merger, Vodafone intended to run open RAN at about 2,500 sites then served by Huawei, mixing Samsung radios with general-purpose computing equipment from Dell and Intel. That route closed once the operator signed a GBP 2 billion contract with Ericsson and Nokia, which built radios matched to its spectrum holdings, and Huawei systems must be out of the UK network by the end of 2027.

The build is running ahead of the merger conditions, with C-band coverage now reaching 50 million people. VodafoneThree counts 437 MHz across the bands it uses for mobile services, against 360 MHz for BT and 326 MHz for Virgin Media O2, and it is shrinking its footprint from roughly 37,000 sites at the merger to between 26,000 and 28,000. Guided annual savings of about GBP 1 billion by the 2032 fiscal year, up from GBP 700 million by 2030, rest partly on that pruning and on closing more than 200 overlapping stores.

Regulatory work still sits over the plan. Ofcom has set aside 540 MHz of the upper 6 GHz band at 6585 to 7125 MHz as mobile priority, with the lower 160 MHz reserved for Wi-Fi and any mobile award to be made sub-nationally, and VodafoneThree has argued that the band should be ringfenced for licensed mobile use. Analysts are not uniformly convinced about the savings: Goldman Sachs’ Andrew Lee put implied earnings growth in the UK market at about 4 percent once merger synergies are stripped out.

Vodafone is introducing Samsung open RAN in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, which leaves the UK outcome awkward for that programme.

Supply note: Vendor swap-outs put working radio hardware into the secondary market well before its service life ends, and that is where a large part of today’s available stock comes from. Stock covers 8T8R and 32T32R massive MIMO antenna units on 3.5 GHz and 2.6 GHz, dual-band and tri-band radio units on 700 MHz, 800 MHz and 1.8 GHz, plus baseband units and site power modules, with cross-reference lists for matching an existing cabinet. In-stock units carry a two to four working day lead time from Hong Kong, and larger lots can be staged against a decommissioning schedule. Radios pulled from retired sites arrive with clean boards and worn mounting hardware more often than faults, so a bracket kit and fan tray ship alongside, and each unit carries output-power and receiver-sensitivity test data. Operators and tower contractors buying for a swap ask for matched batches.