Wind River announced that Wind River Studio is being used by NTT DOCOMO for its 5G virtualised network, which started commercial deployment this month in Japan.
For the launch of NTT DOCOMO’s first vRAN (virtualised radio access networks) commercial service, Wind River Studio Cloud Platform was integrated with Fujitsu’s virtualised central unit (vCU) and virtualised distributed unit (vDU) with the latest NVIDIA-converged accelerator.
Studio Cloud Platform provides a fully cloud-native, Kubernetes- and container-based architecture, based on open source software, for the development, deployment, operations and servicing of distributed edge networks at scale.
Wind River provides both its Studio Cloud Platform and Studio Analytics capabilities to NTT DOCOMO. Studio Cloud Platform, based on the open source StarlingX project, delivers a foundation for a geographically distributed, managed solution able to simplify Day 1 and Day 2 operations by providing single-pane-of-glass, zero-touch, automated management of thousands of nodes, irrespective of their physical location.
“Fujitsu is delivering fully virtualised 5G base station software that can help customers achieve ultra-low latency services and highly optimised TCO,” said Masaki Taniguchi, senior vice president and head of the Mobile Systems Business Unit at Fujitsu. “We look forward to continuing our work with NTT DOCOMO, Wind River, and NVIDIA to grow innovation for next-generation networks.”
“Distributed cloud networks are highly complex. It will be essential to innovate to ease deployment and increase levels of automation and operational efficiency so that service providers can successfully support new 5G use cases,” said Paul Miller, chief technology officer at Wind River. “Working closely with leaders such as NTT DOCOMO, Fujitsu, and NVIDIA, Wind River can continue to deliver proven technology based on Studio that is live with operators in global deployments.”
“By working with industry leaders NTT DOCOMO, Wind River, and Fujitsu, NVIDIA is helping to deliver high-performance, power-efficient, software-defined 5G vRAN and AI applications in an all-in-one, commercial off-the-shelf, NVIDIA-accelerated system,” said Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice president of telecoms at NVIDIA. “This technology can help enable innovative new use cases for a spectrally efficient 5G network.”
Studio Analytics can be used to monitor the status of geographically distributed far-edge clouds. Studio addresses the complex challenges service providers face in deploying and managing geographically distributed, ultra-low latency infrastructure and enables the large-scale deployment of 5G virtualised base stations.
On Wednesday, NTT DOCOMO announced a new service lineup of OREX RAN, OREX SMO, and OREX Services, part of its commitment to becoming an Open RAN service provider for international telecom operators. Through this announcement, the company aims to provide clarity and mutual understanding among international telecom operators regarding the services offered by OREX, thereby facilitating its further expansion.
Additional groundwork was laid last week when it initiated the deployment and operation of OREX RAN and OREX SMO in its domestic 5G network, incorporating Fujitsu base station software, Wind River cloud platform, NVIDIA hardware accelerator, and COTS server with Intel processors. Building on the operational experience accumulated within DOCOMO’s network, these companies plan to enhance OREX Open RAN services and expand their product combinations, striving to offer improved cost-effectiveness and reliability.
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