ATIS’ members are in North America and the parties hope this will encourage the take-up of Open RAN
ATIS and the O-RAN ALLIANCE have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that “enables the transposition of O-RAN ALLIANCE specifications to ATIS standards”.
The MoU has put in place a process to identify O-RAN specifications for adoption by ATIS. They say this “transposition is a major step toward advancing the adoption of Open Radio Access Network (RAN) in North America, by giving O-RAN ALLIANCE specifications the benefit of recognition by ATIS, an accredited standards body with broad membership from North American industry”.
The intention is to “advance the industry towards more intelligent, open, virtualized and global standards-compliant mobile networks”. Today’s agreement announced builds on an earlier MoU to cooperate on Open RAN issues, including security and stakeholders’ requirements for Open RAN.
Weight of two organisations
ATIS’ President and CEO, Susan Miller, commented in a statement, “ATIS members both from industry and government sectors are highly aligned on the importance of Open RAN in creating an ecosystem of trusted suppliers that can deliver capable and cost-effective mobile network platforms.
“The MoU with O-RAN ALLIANCE gives the combined weight of both organizations to a common technical basis for interoperability in the Open RAN market. It complements the ATIS work on the Open RAN Minimum Viable Profile to create comprehensive and recognized Open RAN standards and best practices for the North American market.”
Abdurazak Mudesir, Chair of the Board of O-RAN ALLIANCE and Group CTO of Deutsche Telekom, added, “O-RAN ALLIANCE specifications set the global foundation for open, intelligent, virtualized and interoperable Radio Access Networks, building on common RAN standards.