A group of firms will use SONIC Labs’ outdoor testing site in London to explore the potential of O-RAN in a real-world environment
U.K. digital accelerator Digital Catapult has announced that SONIC Labs, an initiative aiming to advance Open RAN (O-RAN) technology, will welcome a new group of international companies to its program.
These companies will have the opportunity to use SONIC Labs’ outdoor testing site in West London to explore the potential of O-RAN in a real-world environment.
The SONIC Labs program is supported by U.K. telecom regulator Ofcom and funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, to determine the practical viability and performance of O-RAN solutions. The next phase of the program will assess how well O-RAN works in practical outdoor settings, Digital Catapult said.
The SONIC Labs program has established a commercially-neutral, collaborative, environment for testing the interoperability and integration of O-RAN products and services to accelerate market suitability.
Digital Catapult noted that the new cohort members will be the first to use SONIC Labs’ outdoor facility and include Accelleran, G REIGNS, LIONS, VVDN and Pegatron. In addition to the five companies using the outdoor facility, ALPHA Networks will primarily use the SONIC Labs indoor facility located in Digital Catapult’s London headquarters.
“Success of this new phase of the SONIC Labs program will be driven in part by granting access to both our outdoor and indoor facilities to the new cohort of vendors, as well as offering technical support and opportunities for collaboration with industry. We will also continue to connect vendors with the wider telecommunications ecosystem to present new opportunities for investment and collaboration, as a significant contribution to the global charge in accelerating O-RAN innovation,” said Dritan Khaleshi, co-director of SONIC Labs at Digital Catapult.
“The expansion of SONIC Labs to outdoor testing marks the start of an exciting phase for this innovative project. This is an important opportunity for the companies involved to test their products in a real world, outdoor environment – which includes managing the many challenges that come with operating a network outdoors. We’re looking forward to working with this latest group of companies, as the project continues to develop insights that can help shape the telecoms networks of the future,” said Lindsey Fussell, group director networks and communications at Ofcom.
In October 2023, Digital Catapult, in partnership with Ofcom and global collaborators Cellnex UK and Capgemini, had launched its first independent 5G SA outdoor field testing site for O-RAN technology. The outdoor testbed has been established after Ofcom granted Digital Catapult a special research and development license, to encourage further O-RAN experimentation.
The U.K. government has previously announced a joint ambition with local mobile network operators to increase the share of open and interoperable equipment in U.K. networks to 35% by 2030.
