We reported a couple of days back that Bharti Airtel hosted an O-RAN Alliance plugfest in India. STL and ASOCS, two of the members of the Alliance, showcased the mobility load balancing with near real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC). Along with this, they also demonstrated the O-RAN E2 interface testing of RIC. Bharti Airtel had hosted the Indian edition of O-RAN Alliance Plugfest to show the world the growing maturity of O-RAN Solutions. Keep reading ahead to find out more details about the story.
STL & ASOCS Take the Floor in the O-RAN Alliance Plugfest Hosted by Airtel
Open source radio networks (O-RANs) are going to be very crucial in supporting a heavy load of network demand in the future. Users today seek for their wireless networks to support scale, agility, and latency regardless of the kind of connection they have. Thus for 4G and 5G to be able to support and balance a high amount of load in the network with centralised controls, an excellent O-RAN technology is required. In the Plugfest hosted by Bharti Airtel, STL & ASOCS took the floor and demonstrated RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) interworking with Open-eNodeB (O-eNB). Mobile Load Balancing (MLB) and E2 Setup along with subscriptions according to the O-RAN standards were included in the demonstration. As per the demonstration, the network traffic is significantly improved when MLB is handled from the edge of the network through RIC in an O-RAN based network platform. Rajesh Gangadhar, CTO, Access Solutions, STL, said, “This is an incredible feat in establishing RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) platform on a fully virtualised 4G/5G stack with ASOCS.” He further said that with the demos, it is clear that the 4G/5G networks can be deployed with open and disaggregated RAN. Gilad Garon, CEO of ASOCS, said, “We are proud of this achievement made possible by our close and intensive work with our strategic partner - STL.” He further noted that this Plugfest held by Bharti Airtel would help to contribute to ‘Make in India’ initiative for the 4G networks and then in the future with 5G as well.
