Five out of nine projects focused on exploring the benefits of 5G technology to help UK businesses will be using Open RAN architecture.
The projects backed with £28.3 million ($38.4 million) joint investment between government and businesses will test how the country can leverage the potential of 5G and help British industries cash in on the power of modern technology.
The 5 projects that will run on new Open RAN technology are:
The West of England Combined Authority’s 5G Logistics project: Its focus is to help develop 5G products and services to support operations at Bristol Port and Gravity Smart Campus and demonstrate a smart and dynamic port environment.
The Live and Wild project: This project will assess 5G’s capacity to support the needs of the documentary film industry in the UK. The project will monitor 5G’s resilience, adaptability, reliability and image quality as it live streams high-end video content.
5G AMC2 Project: 5G AMC 2 (Accelerate, Maximise and Create for Construction) will examine 5G capabilities to use data to maximise productivity in the construction industry.
The Connected Cowes project: This project will utilize 5G technology to create an immersive yacht racing experience for the sailing community and spectators in Cowes as well as online to increase participation of the sport.
The Eden Project: An environmental project will seek to enhance the experience of visitors using augmented, virtual and mixed realities, while also streaming high-quality streaming video content via its social media channels.
Currently, Ericsson and Nokia are the current suppliers for the British mobile telecom industry.
In the Middle East, stc in collaboration with its partners stc Solutions and Altiostar, became the first operator in the MENA region to run live ORAN sessions last year.
With ORAN stc aims to provide the foundation for next-generation wireless networks, improving the quality of many real-time services and enabling an endless number of use-cases in a fully virtualized network infrastructure, aiding interoperability, diversity and open ecosystem.
What is Open RAN?
The Radio Access Network (RAN) provides the critical technology to connect users, including mobile phones or enterprises, to the mobile network over radio waves. It also acts as a bridge to access all the key applications on the web.
Current RAN technology is provided as a hardware and software integrated platform. The ambition for Open RAN is to create a multi-supplier RAN solution that allows for the separation - or disaggregation - between hardware and software with open interfaces and virtualisation, hosting software that controls and updates networks in the cloud. The promised benefits include supply chain diversity, solution flexibility, and new capabilities leading to increased competition and further innovation.