O-RAN ALLIANCE Broadens Its Industry Collaboration With ETSI, Announces Its 3rd Whitepaper, and 4th Release of Open Software

The O-RAN ALLIANCE welcomes 1&1 as its newest operator member, extending the world-wide community of 30 mobile network operators committed to deployment of open and intelligent Radio Access Networks (RAN).

The Third O-RAN Whitepaper Focuses on O-RAN Minimum Viable Plan and Acceleration towards Commercialization

Published on June 29, 2021, the whitepaper describes key areas to accelerate and enable the introduction of the rich capabilities of O-RAN Architecture in commercial networks. It also outlines a minimum viable set of end-to-end specifications for selected use cases to deploy a secure, multi-vendor interoperable network. The full whitepaper is available at our website.

O-RAN ALLIANCE Sets Cooperation with ETSI and TSDSI

To ensure compatibility and to avoid duplication of work, the O-RAN ALLIANCE’s specification effort builds on common standards and values alignment with other industry bodies.

On May 27, 2021, the O-RAN ALLIANCE signed a cooperation agreement with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). O-RAN ALLIANCE shares with ETSI a common objective to perform and promote regional and international standardization for 3GPP based technologies.

The O-RAN ALLIANCE also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI). It expresses mutual interest in cooperation to grow open interfaces and the open RAN ecosystem in the India subcontinent region.

New Open Test and Integration Centers (OTIC)

On June 28, 2021, the O-RAN ALLIANCE approved three new OTICs:

• European OTIC in Madrid hosted by Telefonica
• European OTIC in Paris hosted by Orange
• Auray OTIC and Security Lab (Taiwan) hosted by Auray Technology

The newly approved OTICs are widening the collaborative, open, and impartial working environment to ensure consistency and quality of testing of O-RAN products and solutions. See the full list of approved OTICs at our website.

New Standards Collaboration Copyright License (SCCL) to Simplify the Open Source Development

O-RAN ALLIANCE has introduced a new Standards Collaboration Copyright License (SCCL). The SCCL has been developed to simplify the process of producing open source SW based on standards, by defining a license that will make it easier for the open source community to use code-like sections of O-RAN specifications in their implementations.

“We believe that open source will play an important role in enabling open implementations, even if an operator never deploys stand-alone open source code in its network,” said Alex Jinsung Choi, Chief Operating Officer of the O-RAN ALLIANCE and SVP of Strategy and Technology Innovation, Deutsche Telekom. “The open source can help suppliers build their commercial implementations, and perhaps most importantly, it can also make it easier to achieve cross-vendor integration and interoperability between open RAN components by providing a reference implementation.”

The June 2021 O-RAN ALLIANCE Industry Summit Available for Replay

The O-RAN ALLIANCE Industry Summit on June 29 provided valuable insights on the latest O-RAN development, especially in terms of commercialization, security and performance. The 90-minute event is available for replay on demand at our website.

4^th Release of Open Software for the RAN Developed by the O-RAN Software Community

The O-RAN Software Community (OSC or O-RAN SC) was formed in partnership with the Linux Foundation in April 2019, to support software development of open RAN solutions available to everyone.

The “D” release delivers major enhancements including support for closed-loop processing use cases, continued evolution of Non-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Control (Non-RT RIC) platform, new and enhanced xApps for the Near-Real-Time Radio Intelligent Controller (Near-RT RIC), as well as new performance monitoring and alarm support.

To deep-dive into the D release and to get the open software, please visit the O-RAN Software Community website.

"With the joint efforts from the mobile carriers, traditional vendors, and more technology partners onboard, the 4th release is the first try to get the full O-RAN software stack working, and in addition we can now declare it is a smart RAN," said Chih-Lin I, the Co-chair of O-RAN Technical Steering Committee. "We are glad to see major accomplishments in the D release, and that our lab now delivers a reliable environment for the software community to continue new feature implementation and integration test verification."

"Ericsson continues to be very active in O-RAN ALLIANCE making contributions to specifications and O-RAN architecture evolution,” said Per Beming, Head of Standard and Industry Initiatives at Ericsson. "In the OSC D release, Ericsson has continued as the key contributor to the Non-RT RIC project by further evolving support for the A1 interface, in addition to laying the foundations for Non-RT RIC automation applications and the R1 interface. Delivering a framework which supports rApp development is a key aspect of intent based management with the A1 interface, enabling more fine-grained intelligent control and optimization decisions.”

“We are excited to extend our contributions to another Linux Foundation project. Our most recent contributions towards the OAM component in the D-release of O-RAN SC demonstrate PANTHEON.tech's commitment to help our customers with the evolution and adoption of open-source projects," said Miroslav Miklus, Chief Product Officer at PANTHEON.tech.

”Making the RAN intelligent and context-aware is critically important for network optimization and automation. The focus of Samsung's O-RAN SC contribution has been towards enhancing the A1-Enrichment Information (A1-EI) & xAPP Framework. Overall, we believe that strengthening the O-RAN AI/ML Framework will play a big role in making operators achieve proactive closed-loop optimization and automation of RAN operations," said Dr. Sunghyun Choi, Corporate SVP and Head of Advanced Communications Research Center of Samsung Research, Samsung Electronics.

“Xoriant has participated in the O-RAN Software Community by contributing code to O1/VES interface of SMO,” said Girish Gaitonde, CEO of Xoriant. “We contributed to the initial implementation of the O-RAN O1/VES interface for OSC, with the idea to enable a close loop automation use-case between SMO and the other network functions such as O-DU, O-RU, O-CU and the Near RT-RIC.”

About O-RAN ALLIANCE

The O-RAN ALLIANCE is a world-wide community of 315 mobile operators, vendors, and research & academic institutions operating in the Radio Access Network (RAN) industry. As the RAN is an essential part of any mobile network, the O-RAN ALLIANCE’s mission is to re-shape the industry towards more intelligent, open, virtualized and fully interoperable mobile networks. The new O-RAN standards will enable a more competitive and vibrant RAN supplier ecosystem with faster innovation to improve user experience. O-RAN based mobile networks will at the same time improve the efficiency of RAN deployments as well as operations by the mobile operators. To achieve this, the O-RAN ALLIANCE publishes new RAN specifications, releases open software for the RAN, and supports its members in integration and testing of their implementations.

For more information please visit www.o-ran.org.

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Contact information

O-RAN ALLIANCE PR Contact
Zbynek Dalecky
pr@o-ran.org
O-RAN ALLIANCE e.V.
Buschkauler Weg 27
53347 Alfter/Germany