Does a new 5G NSA network needs to be from same 4G vendor?

5G NR
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1

Hello.

If I have an existing 4G from one vendor network (Radio and Core), and want to upgrade to 5G NSA, do I need same vendor Radio or can I use other vendor for example?

For example, having Huawei as Radio and Core for LTE, can I use Nokia for 5G NSA?

2

If inter vendor operability for 5G NSA is not supported you cannot use Nokia or Ericsson as far as I am aware.

Double check with existing 4G vendor before about this.

3

It depends if you want to deploy SA or NSA.

For SA it should be fine but for NSA the main issue for using another vendor is that X2 messages are encrypted, and inter-Vendor X2 is not established, so you cannot use original vendor (Huawei in your case) eNodeB as Anchor.

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4

Thanks.

We are looking for an NSA solution, so we need Huawei Radio on top of our Core.

And Nokia Radio ideas should be disregarded.

5

Hi, so for NSA deployment we need to have the below things as a prerequisite…

  1. ENDC support at core and RAN level
  2. X2 interface between 4G-eNB and 5G-gNB
    3.virtual EPC or Core, which can support split features.

Challenges: inter vendor NSA deployment…

  1. Normally, the X2 interface is vendor locked. However, the x2 interface was created by 3Gpp to support interoperability between eNBs irrespective of OEM!

T-shoot:

  1. We have to ask 4G vendors to share X2 specific parameters and IEs with 5G RAN vendors. These parameters need to sync up in 5G RAN side alongwith feature activation.
  2. After proper negotiation among OEM,

We have to execute interoperability test as per 3GPP specs to check x2 call flow and execute steps for conformance.

Now you can deploy NSA in this way.

But still achieving SLA is another level of challenge but totally possible :slightly_smiling_face:

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6

Thank you for this detailed explanation!