Operating from May this year SONIC will be coupling laboratory capabilities with real world indoor and outdoor deployments.
Among the solution providers taking part in SONIC are: Accelleran, Phluido, Effnet, Benetel, Mavenir, Foxconn, NEC and Radisys, with more expected to join.
These vendors and system integrators, with products of varying maturity and with diverse solution models are working together to combine and deploy Open RAN solutions.
The Digital Catapult and Ofcom are seeking to understand the readiness of Open RAN for real world applications, and the vendors and integrators are seeking to build new products and solutions, learning and sharing best practice.
The opportunity to experiment with multiple 5G Open RAN deployments through SONIC will make it possible to investigate product deployment across multiple architectures and integration models, the implications of cloud and virtual architectures.
In addition to telecoms solution providers of all sizes, SONIC will supply insights to network providers – including national operators and smaller private and neutral networks.
Large businesses can explore future deployments such as private and virtual networks, while smaller companies can test the integration potential of their early stage products.
Commenting Simon Saunders, Director of Emerging & Online Technology at Ofcom said, “With the first vendors on board and more expected to follow, this is an exciting step in the journey of the SONIC project. SONIC offers a unique opportunity to shape what the UK’s supply chains of the future could look like and support innovation. So we encourage companies across the telecoms industry to express their interest in participating, as we get set for the project to go live in May.”