By Ifeoma Asika

Nokia has announced that it has joined the Open RAN Policy Coalition to help enable a comprehensive and secure approach to 5G and future network generations. Alongside its customers and other industry stakeholders, Nokia will help shape policy choices that will impact how wireless networks are built, including support for research and development in open networks.

By disaggregating hardware and software components and leveraging open interfaces, Open RAN (O-RAN) technology has the potential to enrich the mobile ecosystem with new solutions and business models, and an expanded multi-vendor ecosystem. Nokia has been working within the O-RAN Alliance to help develop the open reference architectures and open interfaces that will be critical to the delivery of interoperable O-RAN solutions.

Nokia was the first major vendor to join the O-RAN Alliance and it is co-chairing the workgroups that are defining the Open Fronthaul Interface and the Near Real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), which will help automate and optimize the network. In addition to the O-RAN Alliance, Nokia has championed open standards in 3GPP, the Linux Foundation’s ONAP initiative, ETSI’s Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) initiative, and more.

In addition to technical contributions, Nokia supports the continued development and execution of a comprehensive strategy for open and secure RAN policy for 5G and beyond.

Vice President of Government Relations Americas, Nokia Brian Hendricks said: “Nokia believes that policymakers, operators and equipment providers should work together to support research and development of emerging network technologies that include open systems, advanced 5G technologies and foundational 6G research, with policies that support a robust ecosystem of trusted suppliers that will create a strong U.S. position in secure wireless technology. We believe this coalition strongly supports this approach and we are pleased to join and help the industry move forward on this important effort.”