30th of November 2022, AWTG presented at the UK/ROK Open RAN R&D Collaboration launch event at the Digital Catapult office in London. The event marked the commencement of a new partnership between UK DCMS (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) and the Korean Institute for Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP).
The successful South Korean consortium and Flexi-DAS, the UK winning consortium were present along with representatives from the ROK and UK governments.
The event presented learnings and future plans from both projects, and demonstrated how collaboration between IITP and Flexi-DAS can help drive Open RAN R&D in both countries. President Sung Bae Jun from the IITP and Susannah Storey, Director General of Digital and Media policy at DCMS, signed the Terms of Reference at the end of the event
The Flexi-DAS consortium includes AWTG, University of Surrey 5G/6G Innovation Centre; BAI Communications, Lime Communications, and Virgin Media O2. While the Korean Partners includes SOLiD Inc and RFHIC Corporation.
AWTG’s COO, Ian Vernon commented:
“Flexi-DAS and the technologies developed therein are key to being able to efficiently densify 5G network radio component deployments to the level necessary to achieve widespread high-performance 5G coverage, both indoors and outdoors.
AWTG is delighted to be working with such a high-quality consortium in the UK towards such ends, and is looking forward to collaborating with the excellent Republic of Korea consortium through the project.”
President Sung Bae Jun of the Korean Institute for Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation said:
“It is a great pleasure to launch this UK-ROK Open RAN R&D Collaboration which will see Korean and British companies working together to develop innovative solutions to key open RAN and telecoms challenges.
I am also pleased to sign a joint DCMS-IITP Terms of Reference which will guide our cooperation and support further UK-ROK exchange. Both the UK and ROK recognise the importance of initiatives to support telecoms innovation and to support the resilience of telecommunication infrastructure supply chains.”
To read more about the Open Networks Programme, please follow this link.