11 Aug 2022

UK and Korea launch ‘world-first’ O-RAN collaboration

The governments of the UK and South Korea have announced a joint-funded £3.6m competition to collaborate on a “world-first” R&D project to accelerate the development of Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) technology.

For the collaboration, each country’s government will fund a group of several companies to work together to accelerate the development of technical solutions to improve power efficiency in O-RAN networks.

The collaboration forms part of a £25m allocation by the government towards what it is calling the ‘Future Open Networks Research Challenge’ - which will fund early-stage research into open and interoperable telecom solutions.

To coordinate the challenge, a new £10 million body called the UK Telecoms Innovation Network (UKTIN) has been set up to act as a hub for industry and academics looking to access funding or R&D testing facilities. Teams from Digital Catapult, CW (Cambridge Wireless), University of Bristol and West Midlands 5G have been tasked with heading up UKTIN by the government.

A Department for Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson said: “By supporting the emergence of interoperable solutions, the Open Networks R&D Fund aims to improve the resilience of the nation’s telecoms networks, lower deployment costs, and enable innovative new players to take on the incumbents.