Verizon and AT&T, along with a consortium of industry carriers, vendors and developers, have been awarded a grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to drive testing and evaluation of O-RAN compliant wireless infrastructure.
The work of this consortium will focus on refining and driving standards, equipment and interoperability to accelerate O-RAN across the globe, especially as it relates to multi-vendor performance. The award of $42.3 million is made under the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund created by Congress.
The consortium not only includes other major network operators like Jio and Docomo, but also a wide range of traditional suppliers like Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung, and alternative vendors like Fujitsu, Mavenir, Dell Technologies, Intel, Radisys, Rakuten, Red Hat, VMWare by Broadcom, and Wind River Systems. Academic members of the consortium include University of Texas at Dallas, Virginia Tech, Northeastern University, Iowa State University, Rutgers University, and Idaho National Labs.
This effort, which has been dubbed as the Acceleration of Compatibility and Commercialization for Open RAN Deployments Consortium (ACCoRD), will be centered at an Open RAN Testing, Evaluation and R&D Center in the Dallas area, with a satellite location in the Washington, D.C. area.
Joe Russo, EVP & President, Global Network and Technology, Verizon
We applaud the NTIA, Congress, and our industry partners who have recognized the need for advancing innovation, interoperability and supplier diversity within the telecommunications industry and have brought together a consortium of carriers, vendors and developers to directionally advance this important technology evolution. The transition to Open RAN has the potential to bring many benefits in terms of deployment flexibility, faster innovation in an open environment, and greater service options by increasing the opportunity for new entrants to provide competitive and advanced solutions. The work resulting from this grant will drive the evolution of multi-vendor ORAN capabilities to a level of reliability and performance our customers have come to expect. More competition, more innovation, exceptional performance, and increased supplier diversity will all be net benefits to operators and customers. We are pleased to join AT&T in leading this consortium to build on the substantial work we have driven in this area and drive adoption across the industry at scale.
