HFCL Joins O-RAN Alliance To Accelerate Open Innovation In 5G

Mumbai, Feb 21: Telecom equipment manufacturer HFCL on Monday said it has joined the O-RAN Alliance, world-wide community of players mobile network operators, vendors, and research and academic institutions operating in the radio access network (RAN) industry, to accelerate open innovation in 5G.

“As an O-RAN Alliance member, HFCL will focus on contributing to standards that ensure a true open and multi-vendor RAN network with emphasis on fronthaul, beamforming, near-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), service management and orchestration (SMO), and end-to-end test specifications,” the company said in a statement issued here.

HFCL will also focus on integration and validation of its 5G Macro RU products and solutions at plugfests with other O-RAN Alliance members and contributors, it said. “Open networking based on a well-defined architecture and pre-validated solution will enable operators to have increased supplier diversity, accelerate innovation, reduce capex/opex and quick roll-out of 5G networks,” HFCL Managing Director Mahendra Nahata said.

HFCL is investing in building a complete portfolio of products for 5G RAN and 5G transport equipment that include 8T8R/32T32R macro RU, indoor/outdoor small cell, cell site router and aggregation routers for fronthaul, mid-haul and backhaul, the company said. According to the company, O-RAN Alliance’s mission is to re-shape the RAN industry towards more intelligent, open, virtualized and fully interoperable mobile networks. “O-RAN standards enable a more competitive and vibrant RAN supplier ecosystem with faster innovation to improve user experience. O-RAN based mobile networks at the same time improve the efficiency of RAN deployments as well as operations by the mobile operators,” it said.