HFCL joins O-RAN ALLIANCE to accelerate open innovation in 5G

HFCL Limited announced that the company has joined the O-RAN ALLIANCE, a world-wide community of mobile network operators, vendors, and research & academic institutions operating in the Radio Access Network (RAN) industry. O-RAN ALLIANCE’s mission is to re-shape the RAN industry towards more intelligent, open, virtualized and fully interoperable mobile networks. The 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.

HFCL is investing in building a complete portfolio of products for 5G Radio Access Network and 5G Transport equipment that include 8T8R/32T32R Macro RU, Indoor/Outdoor Small Cell, Cell Site Router and Aggregation Routers for fronthaul, midhaul and backhaul.

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 & Orchestration (SMO), and end-to-end test specifications. 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.

“We are excited to be a part of the O-RAN ALLIANCE and look forward to work with alliance members to realize the benefits of O-RAN” said Mahendra Nahata, Managing Director at HFCL.

He further added “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’s 5G Marco Radio Unit (RU) products are based on O-RAN 7.2 split option that provides an open fronthaul interface towards any O-RAN based third party Distributed Unit (DU). The Company is investing in a state of the art 5G Lab at its R&D center in Bangalore for demonstration of various O-RAN use cases and deployment scenarios. The test beds leverage O-RAN architecture and AI/ML to enable network intelligence and closed loop automation through open and standardized interfaces in a multi-vendor network.

CT Bureau