Orange has announced plans to launch what it describes as Europe’s first 5G Stand Alone, fully end-to-end experimental cloud network.

The network, which will launch in France in July, will be the blue-print for Orange’s plans to head towards a ‘zero touch network.’

Orange’s experiment network will be a 100 per cent software-enabled network that is driven by data and AI, fully automated, and cloud-native. It will also encompass Open RAN technology.

Orange said by operating the network it will enable the company to better understand how these technologies work together and their impact on the network lifecycle.

The project will run over a two-year period and will eventually serve several hundred users.

“Our ambition is to prepare Orange for the operator of the future by building more resilient and auto-adaptive networks that offer best in class quality of service in each situation,” said Michaël Trabbia, chief technology and innovation officer, Orange. “This experimental network represents an important milestone on our way to implement and deploy Open RAN and AI technologies to prepare on-demand connectivity and zero touch operator capabilities.”

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