The O-RAN Alliance Announces New Board Members

The O-RAN Alliance announced today that Reliance Jio, TIM, and Verizon have joined the O-RAN board.

“It’s encouraging to see the O-RAN Alliance off to such a strong start and gaining momentum as we welcome three new board members. It’s important that the wireless industry continues to come together to drive forward O-RAN’s goals for open networking, software, and virtualization in global wireless networks especially as 5G is closer than ever,” said Andre Fuetsch, Chairman of the O-RAN Alliance, President-AT&T Labs and CTO of AT&T.

“This is a great opportunity for the Service Provider Industry as network, services and applications leverage cloud native platforms and the right time to fundamentally transform the RAN infrastructure and platforms. We look forward to working closely with the O-RAN Alliance in the acceleration and adoption of open, intelligent, and programmable RAN architectures that can clearly disrupt the building blocks of 5G and beyond,” said Mathew Oommen, President, Reliance Jio. “Jio is excited to play a leadership role within O-RAN and we look forward to working with all the Alliance Partners in shaping the foundation of future networks around the globe.”

“We are very excited by the opportunity for O-RAN to extend the strength of open solutions to the mobile industry,” said Elisabetta Romano, TIM CTO. “TIM is a strong supporter of collaborative communities and standards, and we think that open RAN will be a very important part in the big 5G transformation that is coming. We will also contribute to O-RAN’s work with our mmWave Testing Lab in Torino, one of the first in Europe.”

“We are excited to continue our drive towards an open radio network specification for the wireless industry,” said Ed Chan, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Architect of Verizon. “We will leverage the foundational success of xRAN to accelerate the work in O-RAN. Verizon looks forward to contributing to the success of O-RAN in realizing network components' interoperability at a global scale to create the next generation of flexible wireless networks for our customers."

O-RAN is organized as a series of work groups focused on specific aspects of the RAN open architecture and interfaces, with a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) coordinating the overall work program.

“We are pleased with the smooth transition of both C-RAN Alliance and xRAN Forum contributors into the O-RAN Alliance work groups,” said Dr. Sachin Katti, Professor at Stanford University and O-RAN Alliance TSC Co-Chair. “We’ve seen advancement on all fronts. The mix of new contributors and ideas promises to accelerate our progress during this next phase of O-RAN Alliance specifications and reference designs.”

O-RAN has released its inaugural white paper, “O-RAN: Towards an Open and Smart RAN,” which is available on the O-RAN website. The white paper describes the O-RAN architecture, which drives a more cost-effective, intelligent RAN with open interoperable interfaces for next generation 5G networks and beyond.

“It is an exciting launching pad, building upon the accomplishments of both C-RAN and xRAN communities,” said Chih-Lin I, Chief Scientist of China Mobile and TSC Co-Chair of O-RAN. “This white paper is the fruit of a joint effort from 7 working groups and 12 board members of the O-RAN Alliance. The paper identifies an AI-enabled RAN Intelligent Controller, RAN Virtualization, Open Interfaces, Whitebox Hardware, and Open Source Software as key focus areas. The architecture and roadmap provide clear guidelines for the industry and helps build the momentum to accelerate the necessary transformation towards a sustainable ecosystem.”

The O-RAN Alliance held a series of technical meetings and a symposium, with over 200 people from 80 companies participating. The symposium included speakers from leading operators and industry suppliers.

O-RAN has also started collaboration arrangements with The Linux Foundation to establish an open source software community for the creation of open source RAN software. Collaboration with The Linux Foundation will enable the creation of open source software supporting the O-RAN architecture and interfaces.

“We are excited to see alignment on this exciting area of technology,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, The Linux Foundation. “Our joint efforts will help accelerate the creation, integration, and deployment of open source in the RAN.”

About O-RAN Alliance

The O-RAN Alliance is a world-wide, carrier-led effort to drive new levels of openness in the radio access network of next generation wireless systems. Future RANs will be built on a foundation of virtualized network elements, white-box hardware and standardized interfaces that fully embrace O-RAN’s core principles of intelligence and openness. An ecosystem of innovative new products is already emerging that will form the underpinnings of the multi-vendor, interoperable, autonomous RAN, envisioned by many in the past, but only now enabled by the global industry-wide vision, commitment and leadership of O-RAN Alliance members and contributors. More information about O-RAN can be found at www.o-ran.org.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

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Contact information

O-RAN PR Contact
Rod Stuhlmuller
pr@o-ran.org