AmpliTech Deploys 3,000+ Open RAN Radios for North American Carrier

Scale deployment, not just trials

AmpliTech Group disclosed that more than 3,000 of its radio units are deployed in a North American mobile-network-operator program, with follow-on orders supporting Open RAN programs in North America and Asia. The company reported over $17 million in customer purchase orders during Q3 2026. This is deployment evidence—not merely an interoperability trial—that an operator is buying Open RAN radios at multi-thousand-unit scale from a challenger vendor.

The announcement did not disclose the operator, exact unit economics, revenue recognition, or how much of the $17 million related specifically to the 3,000-plus radios. It also reports purchase orders and deployed units, not audited quarterly revenue or profitability. This makes it a meaningful procurement signal, but not proof of broad market share or lower customer costs.

What it means for enterprise buyers

AmpliTech competes in Open RAN radio infrastructure with established RAN suppliers including Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung Networks, NEC, Fujitsu, Mavenir and Airspan. The deployment adds evidence for the challenger-vendor case, but the undisclosed operator and order allocation prevent any conclusion that it is displacing an incumbent at scale.

Enterprises evaluating private 5G, neutral-host networks or carrier-backed edge services should treat Open RAN availability as more commercially credible than it was 12 months ago. The 3,000-unit figure suggests repeat purchasing under an existing program rather than a one-off proof of concept. But buyers should demand operator-specific evidence on service-level guarantees, integration ownership, lifecycle support, security patching and interoperability before committing budgets.

The lack of disclosed pricing means buyers cannot yet model whether Open RAN lowers total cost of ownership versus integrated Ericsson, Nokia or Samsung systems. Open RAN's promise has always been vendor diversity and cost reduction through disaggregation. This deployment proves the first part. It does not yet prove the second.

UAE operator du launches upper-6-GHz service

UAE operator du announced commercial, end-to-end upper-6-GHz connectivity on its live 5G+ network, using commercially available customer-premises equipment. The service uses 350 MHz of contiguous spectrum from 6,775 to 7,125 MHz. du positions the capacity for enhanced mobile broadband, fixed wireless access, business connectivity and bandwidth-intensive applications such as cloud-based AI workloads.

du did not disclose service tariffs, coverage, customer counts, throughput benchmarks, latency results, eligible enterprise plans or the specific CPE models. The "commercial" claim therefore establishes network and equipment readiness, not demonstrated enterprise adoption.

Upper-6-GHz availability could give du more mid-band capacity than operators constrained to narrower allocations, but its practical advantage depends on national spectrum rules, indoor propagation, device ecosystem maturity and competing fiber, 5G and Wi-Fi 7 access. It is not yet evidence that upper-6-GHz 5G is replacing fiber for demanding enterprise sites.

Buyer implications

UAE organizations with difficult-to-fiber locations—temporary sites, distributed branches, construction zones and backup links—could gain another high-capacity access option. Procurement teams should request measured downlink/uplink performance, contention policies, installation fees, SLA terms and failover behavior before shifting workloads from fiber or existing fixed wireless access.

Neither announcement supports an immediate assumption of lower telecom costs. Buyers should use them to expand competitive bids and require measurable total cost of ownership, SLA and lifecycle comparisons against incumbent RAN, fiber and Wi-Fi-based alternatives. AmpliTech's 3,000-plus deployed radios indicate that Open RAN has progressed beyond isolated trials in at least one North American operator program. du's 350-MHz upper-6-GHz deployment points toward higher-capacity 5G and fixed wireless services, but the absence of pricing, coverage and performance data makes it a technology-readiness signal rather than a proven enterprise business case.