TOKYO – (BUSINESS WIRE) – Airspan Networks Holdings Inc. (NYSE American: MIMO), a provider of ground-breaking, disruptive software and hardware for 5G networks and a pioneer in end-to-end Open RAN solutions, today announced plans to expand its 5G Innovation Lab initiative in Tokyo to accommodate accelerating network adoption and scaling in the Asia-Pacific region.

Airspan Japan’s Tokyo office will spearhead the effort to meet growing demand for critical interoperability testing and integration simplicity in public and private networks as technology continue to reach new 5G use cases.

The Japan Innovation Lab is expected to represent a stepping-stone expansion from the original UK Innovation Lab, sharing many of the same goals. It will host several Open RAN architectures, showcasing the modularisation flexibility of Airspan’s portfolio, from fully-disaggregated software in a split 7.2 format to a software-embedded All-In-One RAN platform. A key driver of this lab is to simplify integration with the rest of the ecosystem by inviting partners with 5G Cores, COTS Servers, UE/CPE/IOT devices, virtual platforms, Hyperscalers, and more.

“Tokyo was a clear choice as we sought to broaden the scope of our 5G Innovation Lab,” said Airspan CMO and CSO Henrik Smith-Petersen. “We have a robust permanent support team due to ongoing deployments with mobile-network-operators in the country and have honed our testing and verification infrastructure there as a result. It is natural that the Innovation Lab would find its newest site here, Japan is a hotspot for 5G.”