An anonymous reader cites The Verge's report. The U.S. government has committed $42 million to accelerate the development of the 5G Open RAN (O-RAN) standard, which will allow wireless providers to use a combination of hardware and software in mobile phones, making it cheaper and easier to use. Develop a larger market for interoperable third-party equipment. . The National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) grant was given to Dallas to prove the feasibility of the standard as a way to halt Huawei's steady march toward global cellular network hardware monopoly. -A RAN test center will be established.
Joe Russo, Verizon's president of global networks and technology, promoted the funding as a way to “innovate faster in an open environment.” To achieve the goals of this standard, AT&T's Vice President of RAN Technology, Robert Soni, said that AT&T and his Verizon partners are working together to achieve the goals of this standard, including Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Dell, Intel, Broadcom, and Rakuten. Rakuten, a Japanese wireless carrier, was founded in 2020 as the first O-RAN network. The company's then-CEO Tarek Amin told The Verge's Nilay Patel in 2022 that Open RAN allows for lower-cost networks to be built using smaller equipment rather than large towers. – This has been part of the promise of 5G for a long time.
But O-RAN is much more than that. Establishing interoperability means that companies like Verizon and AT&T no longer have to buy all their hardware from a single company to build a functioning network. For the remaining companies, this means faster buildouts and “more agile networks,” according to Rakuten. In the US, Dish is working on his own O-RAN network under the name Project Genesis. The 5G network was creaky and unreliable when former Verge staffer Mitchell Clark tried it in Las Vegas in 2022, but the company said last June that it would cover 70% of the U.S. population. announced that the goal had been achieved. But Dish has struggled to become the next major mobile carrier in the U.S., and Echostar, the satellite communications giant that spun off from Dish in 2008, acquired the company in January. The Washington Post says O-RAN is “Washington's anointed champion in its bid to unseat Chinese technology giant Huawei as the world's largest provider of mobile phone infrastructure equipment.” It is written.
According to the paper, Biden has emphasized the importance of O-RAN in conversations with international leaders over the past few years. Additionally, Congress says he, along with NTIA, has committed approximately $2 billion to support the development of this standard.
