In short: The SCONDA project deployed live Open RAN small cells in central Glasgow, running on Three's commercial network. The results: 99%+ availability, 150+ Mbps throughput, 18% of traffic offloaded from macro sites, and a 35% reduction in deployment time compared to traditional small cells. This is what Open RAN looks like when it moves from the lab to the street.
Key Takeaways
- 99%+ availability on live traffic — Open RAN small cells matched the reliability of traditional vendor equipment in a real urban deployment
- 18% macro offload — small cells absorbed nearly a fifth of surrounding macro site traffic, demonstrating meaningful capacity relief in dense areas
- 35% faster deployment — standardised Open RAN hardware and software reduced the time from site acquisition to live service
In a nutshell
The Urban Capacity Problem
Every UK mobile operator faces the same city centre challenge: demand grows faster than macro site capacity can expand. Small cells — mounted on street furniture, facades, and lampposts — add capacity where it is needed without new tower sites. But traditional small cells use proprietary single-vendor hardware, with long deployment timescales and marginal economics. UK operators have deployed far fewer than their counterparts in Asia.
SCONDA set out to test whether Open RAN could change that equation.
What SCONDA Deployed
SCONDA — Smart, Connected and Neutral Densification Architecture — brought together AWTG (a UK Open RAN specialist), Three UK, the University of Glasgow, the Scotland 5G Centre, and Mavenir, funded through the DSIT Future RAN Competition (FRANC).
Open RAN small cells at multiple locations in central Glasgow were integrated into Three's live commercial network on licensed spectrum. Real Three customers connected to them as part of normal service, using Mavenir's software on commercial off-the-shelf hardware, with AWTG handling integration and deployment.
The Numbers
The Glasgow results were unusually clear-cut:
- 99%+ availability throughout the trial. This is the threshold commercial mobile networks are expected to meet, and the Open RAN equipment matched it.
- 150+ Mbps throughput experienced by real users on a real network in a real city centre — not a theoretical lab peak.
- 18% macro traffic offload. The small cells absorbed nearly a fifth of traffic from surrounding macro sites — meaningful capacity relief for a congested urban area.
- 35% reduction in deployment time compared to traditional proprietary small cell installations, using standardised Open RAN hardware and software.
Why These Numbers Matter
The availability figure addresses Open RAN's most persistent criticism: that disaggregated systems introduce reliability risks. Glasgow showed 99%+ on a live commercial network, which is fundamentally the only evidence that matters — lab demonstrations do not settle the reliability question, street-level deployments carrying real subscriber traffic do.
The offload figure proves the capacity case — at 18%, small cells do exactly what they are supposed to do. And the deployment time reduction changes the economics: if Open RAN cuts deployment by a third, more sites become viable, and the knock-on effects for business case approval across the operator's network planning team are significant.
For those of us working in UK Open RAN — Aerix's involvement in the Best of British and ONE WORD projects through the same FRANC programme gave us first-hand experience of this ecosystem — the Glasgow results confirm what the technology delivers when deployed properly on a live network.
The trade-off worth acknowledging is that small cell deployment in the UK remains constrained less by the radio technology and more by planning permissions, site acquisition, and power availability. Open RAN addresses cost and deployment speed, but it does not solve the wayleave negotiation with a reluctant landlord, and in the real world, that is often the binding constraint.
From Trial to Standard Practice
The UK has significantly fewer small cells per capita than South Korea, Japan, or the United States. Open RAN does not solve planning complexity, but it directly addresses cost and deployment speed. SCONDA demonstrated that Open RAN small cells are a present-day, commercially viable option. The performance data is public. The vendor ecosystem, including UK-based companies like AWTG, is ready.
Central Glasgow is one street. The UK has thousands that need the same treatment. The technology is no longer the bottleneck — consequently, the question becomes whether operators and local authorities can clear the non-technical barriers quickly enough to take advantage of what is now a proven approach.