Dell has shaken off its post-MWC hangover to share with us its partnership-driven plans for the telecom market. Clearly, it’s been busy.

The vendor told us, in so many words, that one size clearly no longer fits all, and it’s ready to mingle. 

“To build out these open network architectures there’s a much higher level of partnership required than before,” Andrew Vaz, VP of product management, told Silverlinings. “Obviously, you’re not using one stack from one vendor any more”

Dell mixes and matches

To that end, Dell announced partnerships with Amdocs, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung and Qualcomm at MWC to encourage the adoption of cloud-native 5G technologies. It also recently signed a similar deal with Red Hat. 

The company is also working on infrastructure blocks with Wind River to support virtualized RAN (vRAN) and open RAN developments. We’ve already noted that Dell is working with Marvell on virtual radio access networks (v-RAN). 

Dell also is working with Dish Wireless in the U.S. and Vodafone in Europe  on open RAN deployments. Notably, Dish is recognized as the operator that has deployed the most open RAN gear in the U.S. so far. Silverlinings previously covered that Dell supplies the servers for Dish’s home-made base stations. 

Dell already sells into the IT side of the house for operators and is now moving into the networking arena. “I think we’re in 17-plus of the top 30 telecom operators in the world are running their packet cores on our servers,” Vaz stated.

The company is working with Dish Wireless in the U.S. and Vodafone in Europe  on open RAN deployments. Notably, Dish is recognized as the operator that has deployed the most open RAN gear in the U.S. so far. Silverlinings has previously covered that Dell supplies the servers for Dish’s home-made base stations.

It has signed a private 5G “smart mine of the future” deal with Rogers in Canada, Vaz added.

He also noted that Dell is working with SKT on private wireless mobile edge compute.

Phew! That’s a lot of partners! That, however, won’t be strange to anyone who saw our story on the ecosystems of cloud-native 5G service providers.

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