The company says this “proves its dedication” to developing extensible radio access networks (RANs).
Comarch has become the newest member of the O-RAN Alliance – the consortium set up to promote a software-based, extensible RAN – to help standardise critical elements of the O-RAN Alliance architecture.
O-RAN’s architecture is designed to transform existing, static, highly-proprietary RAN infrastructure into an extensible, software-based service delivery platform that can rapidly respond to changing user behaviour, application and business needs.
Leveraging architecture
Comarch’s contribution to O-RAN will focus on leveraging the architecture, ensuring interoperability and interfaces are compliant through work on end to end use cases.
The use cases will be in the domain of orchestration and automation of RAN services and functions, which include self-healing and self-optimisation.
Active contribution
Michał Mędrala, Head of OSS Consulting at Comarch, said, “Comarch strongly believes in the future of open RAN architectures and we are glad to be taking an active part in creating them.
“Joining the O-RAN Alliance is just another step and a great extension to the actions we are already taking in terms of driving innovations and openness in the industry.
“As a member, we would like to drive the conversation and focus on areas such as multi-vendor, scalable RAN architecture, interoperability, orchestration and automation of RAN services and functions.”
Origins
O-RAN Alliance was announced in February 2018 with founding members AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DOCOMO, and Orange. It now has more than 200 members, including 26 operators, vendors and academic institutions.
It was intended to be a world-wide, operator-led effort to drive new levels of openness in the radio access network of next generation wireless systems. It combined the C-RAN Alliance and the xRAN Forum.
There have been some grumbles that certain vendors have come to dominate the effort – for example, Nokia has contributed the bulk of the code for the RAN Intelligent Controller and other elements.
Also it has been dragged into politics. There have been attempts to involve it in a strategy of America-first – and to a lesser extent Japan-first – whereas the idea is a fully open RAN platform that supports innovators regardless of their location.