ACES, a leading Saudi Arabian neutral host operator which provides in-building solutions, Wi-Fi-DAS, fibre optics, data centres and managed services, has announced a collaboration in a strategic open RAN partnership with RANsemi, a British wireless semiconductor innovator specialising in 5G open RAN baseband technologies.
The partnership, endorsed and funded by the Saudi Arabian National Technology Development Programme (NTDP) under the umbrella of the Saudi Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT), aims to advance 5G open RAN and small cell technologies and innovations across the country.
The partners say they are developing a class-leading 5G open RAN neutral host small cell system. The project will leverage RANsemi’s 5G baseband expertise and ACES’ in-house RF design capabilities.
The NTDP has expressed its support for this initiative, and the project is already underway. Little further information is available at the moment, but RANsemi and ACES have said they will jointly demonstrate the prototype system at the Small Cells World Summit (SCWS) in London, 3-4 June 2025.
Peter Claydon, CEO of RANsemi, which develops open RAN standard-compliant baseband systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) and carrier-grade software products for 5G and 4G radio access networks, says: “This partnership is a prime example of our efforts to partner effectively to realise the full potential of our joint technologies in successfully addressing real-world challenges. We’ve been working with ACES behind the scenes for some time, and we are pleased that we can now publicly bring this 5G open RAN project to fruition.”
