NEC planned to set up an open RAN laboratory in India as part of plans to boost its commercial-ready 5G ecosystem development.
In a statement, the Japanese company said the facility will “accelerate development” of the company’s 5G open ecosystem to eventually create “end-to-end commercial-ready solutions” for customers.
“The lab will also be responsible for post deployment trouble-shooting, life cycle management as well as continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) of solutions”, the company said.
The lab in India adds to the open Ran centre of excellence (CoE) the company set up in the UK last month to support its ambitions in the new technolgoy.
NEC noted it aims to create more value in its ecosystem by combining solutions and products with its aforementioned competencies, and products from wireless communication companies Altiostar, GigaTera, and MTI.
Allen Yen, MTI chairman and CEO said: "As one of the leaders in the open RAN ecosystem, NEC has shown its capabilities in integrating end-to-end O-RAN solutions. NEC’s CoE provides the market a great way to demonstrate O-RAN, using components from different suppliers that conform with the O-RAN specifications”.
"MTI is excited to be one of the initial partners of NEC’s CoE lab, and will continue to supply O-RAN compliant radio units to the market. We are confident that our firm partnerships with the industry’s best talents will enable us to advance the development of cutting-edge carrier-grade ecosystems at full throttle," said Kazuhiko Harasaki, NEC Corporation service provider solutions division deputy general manager.
"NEC will take leadership in curating pre-validated models and facilitating commercial, multi-vendor Open RAN deployment as a viable alternative 5G network for operators."
