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Global telcos launch OTIC initiative for 5G infra

Mumbai, Sep 19

Global telecom operators, including the Indian major Reliance Jio here on Wedneday launched the 'Open Test and Integration Centre' (OTIC) initiative to accelerate multi-vendor, open and disaggregated next-generation 5G wireless infrastructure.

The operators and vendors are China Mobile, Reliance Jio, China Telecom, China Unicom, Intel, Radisys, Samsung Electronics, Airspan, Baicells, CertusNet, Mavenir, Lenovo, Ruijie Network, Inspur, Sylincom, WindRiver, ArrayComm, and Chengdu NTS, Reliance Jio said in a statement.

The participants were collaborating on "multi-vendor interoperability and validation activities for realising 'O-RAN' compliant disaggregated 5G access infrastructure that leveraged open software and hardware hardened for commercial deployments", it said.

"The OTIC initiative is an operator-led collaboration with the aim to facilitate OEM and other open source products and solutions to be functionally compliant to the specifications of the O-RAN Alliance, through verification, integration and testing of disaggregated RAN components and to deliver the desired architecture that supports a plug-n-play model," it said.

Said Mathew Oommen, President, Reliance Jio, "Jio has been able to fundamentally disrupt the telecom space. However, we realise that disruption and innovation is a continuous process. We are fast-tracking our efforts in 5G and Open technologies by developing and working with OTIC to accelerate the adoption of industry standard, interoperable O-RAN based deployments."

The OTIC was an important step toward enabling the commercialisation of the Open RAN platform and the new model for wireless networks, he said.

The initiative aims to expedite how the industry develops 'open RAN' technologies and products that are hardened and supported for real-world deployments. The initial focus is to ensure RAN components from multiple vendors support standard and open interfaces and can interoperate in accordance with O-RAN test specifications, the statement said

"Additional partners are invited to join to advance creation of ready-to-implement blueprints for RAN Solutions conforming to the O-RAN specifications to realise open and disaggregated 5G networks," it said.