Nokia and Saudi neutral-host provider TAWAL have successfully completed the world’s first live demonstration of a multi-tenant, shareable Open RAN edge-cloud platform. This innovation enables mobile operators and large enterprises to launch high-performance 5G services at a fraction of the cost previously required.
The demonstration highlighted how TAWAL can offer active infrastructure as a service, providing mobile operators with significant savings while ensuring their networks are futureproofed with open, cloud-native flexibility. Nokia’s anyRAN architecture delivers the trusted performance needed to run anyRAN workloads on an open edge cloud, creating a scalable and adaptable solution for the telecom industry.
As the demand for 5G connectivity surges across Saudi Arabia, particularly with the ongoing smart city giga projects, traditional single-operator rollouts risk infrastructure duplication, driving up capital expenditure and delaying service deployment. By adopting a neutral host model, TAWAL can pool spectrum-agnostic, Open RAN baseband, and radio assets, allowing multiple service providers to share the same edge cloud platform. This approach reduces energy consumption, frees up spectrum, and helps shrink the digital divide for businesses and communities nationwide.
The live demonstration at LEAP 2025 in Riyadh featured Nokia 5G AirScale Indoor Radios connected to Dell PowerEdge XR8000 servers, which hosted virtualized CU/DU software in Nokia’s anyRAN framework. This open, cloud-native platform supports multi-operator RAN sharing and can host third-party RAN software, offering TAWAL full vendor flexibility while ensuring carrier-grade performance. The solution’s compact footprint and reduced power draw make it ideal for deployment in smart city edge nodes and enterprise campuses.
Abdulrahman Al Moaiqel, Chief Commercial Officer at TAWAL, noted, “Neutral hosts must add value beyond steel and concrete. By partnering with Nokia, we offer Saudi operators an on-demand, pay-as-you-grow 5G platform that lowers their total cost of ownership (TCO) and accelerates the Kingdom’s digital transformation for its giga projects.”
Mikko Lavanti, Senior Vice President for the Middle East and Africa at Nokia, added, “Transitioning from a tower company model to a full-fledged network company requires technology that blends openness with proven performance. Our anyRAN approach allows TAWAL to mix and match vendors at the cloud layer while guaranteeing the ultrareliable, low-latency experience that operators and users demand.”
