Korean carrier KT and Japanese tech company Fujitsu have completed a verification facility at the KT Research and Development Center in Seoul, South Korea, at which the two companies leveraged Fujitsu’s Open RAN-based 5G base station equipment to successfully test call connections during interoperability trials for open fronthaul.
Japanese telco NTT Docomo has provided Fujitsu with technical support throughout the project. With the construction of this new test facility, KT aims to accelerate the introduction of O-RAN technology to Korea’s 5G networks.
The three companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) centering on the introduction of software-defined virtualized RAN (vRAN) and RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) in alignment with the “5G Open RAN Ecosystem”, an initiative whose participants include NTT Docomo and Fujitsu.
The MoU stipulates that the three companies agree to cooperate towards further activities including the construction of an O-RAN test facility and multi-vendor interoperability testing in South Korea.
“The multi-vendor RAN architecture enables optimum solutions for a variety of deployment scenarios, including small, space-saving base stations that can cover areas in city centers where communication is concentrated, or base stations that can cover wide areas and can thus contribute to efficient and flexible equipment procurement and cost reductions. Open specifications also make it possible to create safe and transparent RAN architecture,” Fujitsu said in a release. “5G mobile networks are becoming increasingly popular in Korea, and the demand for 5G is expected to grow even further in the future. KT is considering the introduction of multi-vendor Open RAN to reduce equipment procurement and construction costs and to achieve flexible network construction capabilities. To this end, KT and Fujitsu constructed an Open RAN verification facility and conducted testing for multi-vendor interoperability with O-RAN open fronthaul in October 2021.”
For the testing facility, KT has adopted Fujitsu’s 5G base stations, which claims to be the world’s first O-RAN compliant base stations adopted for commercial service by NTT Docomo. The tests involved verification of the interoperability between the base station controllers of Fujitsu’s 5G base station equipment and a Korean medium-sized vendor’s radio unit, as well as end-to-end communication tests. The companies successfully verified O-RAN compliant operation during the tests.
Fujitsu supplied KT with 5G base station equipment and provided support during the verification tests, while Fujitsu in turn received NTT DOCOMO’s technical support for multi-vendor interoperability testing.
Moving forward, KT aims to further expand its verification facilities with the main aim of the future introduction of O-RAN based vRAN and RIC systems.
