NEC said this O-RAN certification has been issued by Japan OTIC
Japanese tech company NEC said it has obtained O-RAN certification from Japan’s Open Testing & Integration Center (OTIC) for its 5G base station radio unit (RU).
The company said that this 5G base station radio unit has been delivered to Japanese company Rakuten Symphony and is being deployed globally.
Rakuten Symphony is a provider of O-RAN solutions and says it has built the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network with its parent company, Rakuten Mobile.
This is the first certification issued by the Japan OTIC since its establishment. Japan OTIC was established in December 2022 by Japanese operators NTT Docomo, KDDI, SoftBank and Rakuten Mobile at Yokosuka Research Park near Tokyo as a center for testing and certification based on the international standard specifications defined by the O-RAN Alliance.
A test environment developed by Japan OTIC and Rakuten Mobile was used for this certification. The certification confirms that NEC’s RU conforms to O-RAN specifications and that it has cleared the requirements for performance and interoperability between devices connected to the O-RAN interface.
“This is an example of Japan’s leading role in advancing the global Open RAN ecosystem by nurturing local technology innovation and providing a collaborative, open and impartial testing environment. We look forward to providing NEC’s 5G O-RAN certified products, developed in Japan, to our customers around the world,” said Sharad Sriwastawa, acting president of Rakuten Symphony.
Michio Kiuchi, corporate EVP and general manager of the Telecom Service Business Unit at NEC, said: “This certification of O-RAN conformance will streamline interoperability testing between base station equipment and shorten the lead time for equipment deployment when introducing this product in a multi-vendor environment, making it easier for mobile network operators to build an Open RAN ecosystem.”
Last year, NEC had increased its capacity to deliver end-to-end O-RAN ecosystems with the acquisition of Irish firm Aspire Technology.
The Japanese company noted that the addition of Aspire strengthens NEC’s system integration (SI) offering for Open RAN 5G applications, which require an increased level of systems design and integration when compared with legacy ecosystems.
