Anthony Areh
Ericsson, a multinational telecommunications and networking company on Wednesday says it has launched Open Lab, a virtual and physical space to drive network virtualisation technologies.
Ericsson in a statement said the Open Lab was also a space for fast interactive collaboration and co-creation with communications service providers and ecosystem partners.
It said the company’s Open Lab had a global focus on innovating virtualised 5G Radio Access Networks (RAN) technologies
According to the statement, customers can realise new deployment or use case scenarios, increase automation and reduce manual intervention.
It said Ericsson Open Lab was accessible virtually to customers globally.
“It is co-located with the company’s Cloud RAN expertise at Ericsson’s R&D site in Ottawa. The company will support these activities from its locations around the world.
“Open Lab enables fast and interactive collaboration that delivers innovation to complement existing RAN solutions.
“The lab offers space to further explore Open RAN technologies, including aspects such as virtualisation, management, and orchestration,” it said.
The company noted that the lab would foster greater cooperation in areas such as machine learning, network automation and optimisation with communications service providers and industry partners.
It said the service providers included KDDI, Ooredoo, Orange, Softbank Corp, Turkcell and ecosystem partners such as Intel, NVIDIA, Red Hat and Wind Rivers.
Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Business Area Networks, Ericsson said: “Open technology underpins the modern mobile miracle, which connects more than eight billion devices today with one set of global operating standards.
Jejdling said with Ericsson Open Lab, the company invites it customers and partners to co-create and bring new cloud innovations to 5G.
“We have created this collaboration to develop architectures and common operating standards that complement existing 5G ready technology.
This initiative will help to test the limits of 5G connectivity, working closely with operators and enterprise customers globally, as the industry continues to adopt more open architectures, he said.
Toshikazu Yokai, Executive Officer, Chief Director of Mobile Technology, KDDI, says: “KDDI is committed to continuous network innovation and the creation of new technologies to bring superior performance to our users.
Yokai said working with Ericsson in the Open Lab would enable it company’s design and engineering teams to collaborate in real-time and co-develop new virtualised RAN technologies to accelerate the intelligence and agility of our 5G networks.
Arnaud Vamparys, Senior Vice President, Radio Networks at Orange, said :“In the Open RAN journey, interoperability and automation are key topics for Orange.
Vamparys said the collaboration with Ericsson would allow them explore new flexible and innovative technologies like Cloud RAN for mobile network evolution.
