In addition to this trial, BT will also open a dedicated Open RAN Innovation Centre at its Adastral Park facility later this year. This will provide opportunities for large and small vendors to develop and prove their equipment and provide a platform for open architecture progress across all network elements.
Neil McRae, chief architect, BT, explained, “Our Open RAN trial with Nokia is one of many investments we are making to boost the performance of our 4G and 5G EE network and deliver an even better service to our customers.
“Our high performance, high efficiency radio access equipment, provided by the major global vendors, has enabled us to roll-out 4G and now 5G at scale, with the confidence that our customers will get the best network experience possible.”
Mark Atkinson, SVP for radio access networks PLM, Nokia, added, “We are delighted to deepen our partnership with BT with this trial. Nokia is investing in Open RAN capabilities to enable a robust telecom ecosystem with strong network performance and security.
“An open and programmable RAN enables many new advanced capabilities to be introduced that can automatically optimize the 5G network. I look forward to seeing how this project develops.”
BT said that it is developing Open RAN with its vendor partners, to ensure it becomes a viable, mature, scale option for network optimisation as soon as possible.