The UK government has announced a competitive initiative offering up to £80 million (R$510 million) to address key barriers to the adoption of open mobile networks, marking a phase of wider R&D funding in this area.
The funding is part of a £250m (R$1.6bn) fund
Resources of this level will be used in three areas. First, where high density is required, the government has said, represents the most challenging environments for the technical performance of open RAN components and systems. The goal is to develop, demonstrate and test approaches to improve open RAN performance in these areas.
Second, the project will target RF components including hardware, chipsets and radio technology. Finally, it seeks to solve the complex problem of software involving the development of an intelligent RAN controller and other software components.
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Julia Lopez said the R&D competition contributes to the goal of developing world-class talent to “boost domestic development of next-generation telecommunications technologies such as Open RAN”.
One group that has already benefited from UK Government funding in this area is the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), which has received a £2.3m chunk (R$15m) to accelerate RAN intelligence on 5G by 2021.
TIP chief executive Kristian Toivo said the UK is heavily invested in a more open ecosystem and that “projects to develop, demonstrate and test commercially ready approaches for operators are vital to the success of open networks”.
“TIP has used previous UK funding to accelerate the testing of operable RAN solutions, and this funding is another important step towards Open Target.”
* With information from MWL
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