Jersey City, USA.18 January 2022 – Amdocs, a provider of software and services to communications and media companies, announced that it is part of a consortium that has secured UK Government funding in an initiative designed to accelerate Open RAN deployment in the UK and globally.
The “Accelerating RAN Intelligence in 5G” (ARI-5G) consortium is one of several winning bids to receive funding from the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) through its Future RAN (FRANC) competition.
Led by the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), ARI-5G will validate use cases for open and disaggregated solutions with innovations in 5G power consumption, energy efficiency, and spectrum management accelerating successful and scalable commercialisation over an initial 18-month period.
The consortium will implement, test and demonstrate a standards-based RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) platform with specific applications. The project will result in proven RAN automation use cases that can be deployed in both third party and open-source RICs, providing real-world validation in a 5G SA (standalone) network.
Amdocs will leverage its RF planning, optimisation and Self-Organising Networks (SON) use case experience to deploy and demonstrate multiple analytics and optimisation applications. The other ARI-5G consortium members are BT, Accelleran, AttoCore, West Midlands 5G and VIAVI Solutions.
“Over the next decade Open RAN will transform the economics of mobile networks with real-time automation at its heart,” says, Anthony Goonetilleke, group president of technology and head of strategy at Amdocs. “We’re looking forward to contributing our RAN automation and systems integration expertise to this exciting project.”
“We’re pleased to have Amdocs on board as part of the ARI-5G consortium,” says Vishal Mathur, global head of engagement, Telecom Infra Project. “We look forward to them contributing their expertise in RAN automation and RAN systems integration.”
UK digital infrastructure minister Julia Lopez says, “Our mobile networks play an increasingly crucial part in our lives and businesses, which is why we’re investing £36 million (€43.24 million) in cutting-edge projects to ensure our networks are safe and secure for decades to come. I’m pleased to see such an outstanding range of innovators are now on board with FRANC as we push ahead to build a more competitive and resilient telecoms supply chain.”
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