They will work on the next phase of the government-backed programme
Working with Ofcom, Digital Catapult says nine companies have signed up to accelerate the development of Open RAN products. They have joined the next phase of the SmartRAN Open Network Interoperability Centre (SONIC) Labs’programme, funded by the government Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
The companies a combination of domestic and overseas, and some – India’s VVDN, SOLiD with headquartered in South Korea and ASOCS based in Israel – are new to the UK market. The other six joiners are Accelleran, CableFree, Effnet, Phluido, Radisys and VMware.
They will work with Digital Catapult to integrate their Open RAN products into working, end-to-end systems and conduct indoor interoperability and performance testing.
The programme encourages new solution providers to enter the telecoms supply chain in the UK to boost the adoption of Open RAN and the supplier ecosystem. The first five companies to join the SONIC Lab programme were announced in July.
This phase of the programme will focus on system integration, exploring the maturity of the Ran Intelligence Controller (RIC) and investigating ARM-based Open RAN implementations.
ASOCS, Accelleran and Radisys will act as system integrators, responsible for benchmarking end-to-end interoperability, wider benchmarking and experimenting with “swapability”. The system integrators will lead installation of software and firmware, and capture optimisation and performance improvement measures.
All nine Open RAN vendors will:
• share best practices around the implementation of Open RAN standards,
• solve specific Open RAN integration problems,
• collaborate with new partners to create knowledge, and
• have the chance to demonstrate their products to potential customers and end-users.