This event is jointly delivered by UK5G and DCMS
The 5G Supply Chain Diversification Strategy (2020) set out the Government’s long-term vision for the telecoms access supply market. One where competition and innovation bring forward new deployment models based on open interfaces and interoperable standards, with flexible networks and comprising an array of suppliers. This is because such a market increases competition and choice, and ultimately introduces interchangeability of equipment into the supply chain, boosting resilience.
One of our top priorities for delivering the strategy is investing in a R&D ecosystem that will support industry to accelerate the development of interoperable deployment methods, like Open RAN. In particular, the strategy identifies the high cost of R&D as a key barrier to entry for suppliers of open and interoperable products.
Following on from the Future RAN Competition, we are keen to understand from industry how future government funding can support the R&D that’s needed more long-term, to get interoperable technologies competing with traditional deployment methods in the most demanding, dense environments - both technically and commercially.
We would like to provide an opportunity to explore industry thinking in this area, highlight industry challenges and opportunities, and identify where there are still gaps that Government investment can fill, in delivering our long-term vision for a healthy, interoperable supply market. It is also an opportunity for DCMS to discuss our latest thinking while also signalling that the UK government is supporting key diversification objectives.
The expert Telecoms Diversification Taskforce identified five areas that still needed to be addressed before Open RAN could be deployed at scale. These are guiding our approach to R&D, and will form the basis of three areas of discussion:
1) Product development and engineering - what technologies still need to be refined and developed before Open RAN is competitive in all geographies? Which of those should the UK Government invest in/and which are being delivered by the market?
2) System Integration - how can we build systems integration capability in the ecosystem, whilst avoiding potential ‘systems integrator lock-in’?
3) Performance demonstration and network integration - how can we start to demonstrate Open RAN performance in the most demanding environments? And how can we demonstrate interoperability and integration in a brownfield deployment environment?
Attendees will be provided with a full agenda closer to the event. Please register your interest for this event and we will be in touch to confirm your place.
If you have any questions, please do get in touch via: hello@uk5g.org
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