Two of the most innovative companies in global ICT – Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) and Intel – are pooling R&D excellence to create high-performing Cloud RAN solutions. The companies have launched a tech hub in California, USA. It focuses on the benefits that Ericsson Cloud RAN and Intel technology can bring to: improving energy efficiency and network performance, reducing time to market, and monetizing new business opportunities such as enterprise applications.

Called Ericsson-Intel Tech Hub, the center is based in Ericsson’s D-15 facility in Santa Clara and is already operational. The current focus includes activities in power management and performance planned this year as well as joint work on Cloud RAN containerized network function (CNF)* applications on upcoming generations of processing platforms.

Per Narvinger, Head of Product Area Networks, Ericsson, says: “Cloud RAN technologies and virtualization have enormous potential to impact networks of the future. Through the Tech Hub, we will accelerate Cloud RAN technology in areas like energy efficiency and performance, while reducing time to market.”

Dan Rodriguez, Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Network Platforms Group at Intel, says: “The transformation to fully virtualized, cloud-native-based networks brings tremendous innovation and agility, and is now extending to the RAN. The Tech Hub will provide a venue for Ericsson and Intel to extend our collaboration and showcase how a virtualized RAN can deliver greater levels of automation, agility and sustainability.”

The Tech Hub is the latest of several Ericsson Cloud-RAN focused initiatives and portfolio additions. The company introduced its Cloud RAN offering in October 2020 and established the Ericsson Open Lab, aimed at driving virtualized 5G RAN technologies with Ericsson Cloud RAN customers and ecosystem partners, in March 2021.

Ericsson already supports service providers with the most robust and high-performing 5G RAN solutions while planning for future network topologies and ideologies. Intel has been helping the industry transform communications networks for more than a decade and offers an extensive portfolio of processing, acceleration and software solutions that are deployed today, including Intel Xeon processors.

The Tech Hub will augment existing R&D work for both companies with multi-year product design efforts, enabling communications service providers to better plan their future roadmaps and offerings.

Ericsson and Intel’s latest collaboration was unveiled at the Big 5G Event in Austin, USA.