O-RAN Alliance boasts new specifications, expands board

• O-RAN Alliance is now two years old
• It is cranking out specs for disaggregated radio access network architectures
• Three operators have been added to the board
• One of those is O-RAN Alliance newcomer Rakuten Mobile 

The O-RAN Alliance, which develops specifications for disaggregated radio access network deployments, has released 20 new specifications in the past four months and has added representatives from three additional operators – KDDI, Rakuten Mobile and Vodafone – to its board for the new two-year term. 

Its new specifications include “the initial version of O2 interface general aspects and principles, the HW reference design for the indoor picocells in 7.2 and 8.0 split, as well as an end to end system testing framework.” An extensive blog highlighting the new specs is available here.

These are just some of the details that emerged in an update after the Alliance held its Annual General Meeting at the end of October, during which the board was expanded to 15 seats. The operators now represented on the board are:

1. AT&T
2. China Mobile
3. Deutsche Telekom
4. NTT DOCOMO
5. Orange
6. Bharti Airtel
7. KDDI
8. Rakuten Mobile
9. Reliance Jio
10. Singtel
11. TIM
12. Telefonica
13. Telstra
14. Verizon
15. Vodafone

Now the Alliance is set to play a crucial role in shaping the Open RAN market during the crucial next 24 months, as more and more operators commit to tests, trials and deployments, and add their support to what is a growing ecosystem of operators and technology developers. Vodafone, for example, just announced a firm minimum commitment to Open RAN infrastructure investment in the UK in the coming years. (See Vodafone commits to Open RAN rollout in UK, plans R&D labs across Europe.)

With Rakuten Mobile on board as a new member (as well as taking a seat on the board), the Alliance now boasts 27 major carriers among its community and more than 230 members in total. 

“The expanding operator commitment validates the O-RAN Alliance‘s approach to drive RAN transformation by creating global standards for open and intelligent RAN,” said Alex Jinsung Choi, COO of the Alliance and SVP, Technology Strategy & Innovation, Deutsche Telekom.

The Alliance also highlighted the creation of its Security Task Group: Check out this blog for more details on that crucial development. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV

• Get updates from a number of senior O-RAN Alliance officials, including AT&T’s Andre Fuetsch and DT’s Alex Choi, as well as other senior industry figures during TelecomTV’s upcoming Open RAN Summit (November 17-19).