Tokyo, October 8, 2021 – NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) announced today that its Open RAN 5G massive MIMO (*) radio units have been awarded a Telecom Infra Project (TIP) Requirements Compliant Ribbon, and are listed on new windowTIP Exchange.

TIP is a global community of companies and organizations that work together to develop, test and deploy open, disaggregated, and standards-based solutions that deliver the high quality connectivity that the world needs – now and in the decades to come.

With this award, NEC demonstrates compliance with TIP OpenRAN RU requirements for its latest released 5G massive MIMO radio units, specifically the new windowMB5440, new window5450 and new window5460 units, which meet O-RAN standards and feature massive MIMO with advanced beamforming. These TIP OpenRAN compliant RU products are available for sub-6 C-band (n77 and n78), the most popular 5G bands awarded globally, and can be deployed for use particularly in dense urban environments which require high performance and high coverage.

NEC is an Open RAN market leader with its end-to-end Open 5G solutions, system integration capabilities and deployments with its signature 5G massive MIMO radio offering.

"Having technology suppliers such as NEC contribute to the TIP OpenRAN Project Group and have their products progress through TIP's Test and Validation framework, with their outcomes being listed on TIP Exchange showcases how the ecosystem can build, test, and procure OpenRAN equipment in a more efficient way," said David Hutton, Chief Engineer, TIP. "We look forward to many more of these announcements."

"Ensuring availability and O-RAN compliance in open forums such as TIP is crucial to stimulating the Open RAN market and fostering ecosystem growth," said Patrick Lopez, Global VP of Product Management for 5G Products, NEC. "This award comes on the heels of NEC being selected by Vodafone for implementation, as well as Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom for trials with live network integration of our 5G massive MIMO radio units, and we will continue investing in our offerings to facilitate the global adoption of Open RAN."

"NEC's MB5440, 5450 and 5460 products are the first Massive MIMO units of their kind to receive a TIP Requirements Compliant Ribbon and to be listed in the TIP Exchange, allowing operators to utilize TIP qualified products and upcoming blueprints to deploy 5G Massive MIMO," said Dimitris Mavrakis, Senior Research Director at ABI Research. "NEC is becoming an important player in the Open RAN domain, and having its products go through TIP's Test and Validation will accelerate the adoption of Open RAN for much needed 5G capacity rollouts."