O-RAN ALLIANCE Global PlugFest Spring 2024 Initiated with Focus on Six Themes

• O-RAN Global PlugFest Spring 2024 is hosted by 20 companies and institutions across Asia, Europe and America, with more than 40 participants
• The PlugFest focuses on six themes prioritized by the O-RAN ALLIANCE
• The themes include O-RAN energy efficiency, O-RAN 4G/5G white-box hardware, and O-RAN Fronthaul testing

BONN, Germany, April 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The O-RAN ALLIANCE (O-RAN), fulfilling its mission to transform Radio Access Networks (RAN) to be open, intelligent, virtualized and fully interoperable, started this year's first PlugFest – the O-RAN Global PlugFest Spring 2024.

O-RAN Global PlugFests are periodic events organized and co-sponsored by O-RAN ALLIANCE to enable efficient progress of the O-RAN ecosystem through well-organized testing and integration. PlugFest participants gain early experience with conformance, interoperability and E2E testing in cooperation with other industry players. Achievements made at O-RAN PlugFests pave the way to O-RAN certification, proving confidence in commercially available O-RAN products.

O-RAN Global PlugFest Spring 2024 focuses on six themes prioritized by the O-RAN ALLIANCE, aiming to accelerate commercialization of O-RAN products and solutions from diverse vendors around the world. These themes are:

• O-RAN Energy Consumption, Efficiency and Savings Testing – carried out at five PlugFest venues
• O-RAN E2E Deployment Templates, DevOps, and Test Automation – carried out at four PlugFest venues
• Demonstration of consistent and repeatable open fronthaul testing in multiple labs – carried out at four PlugFest venues
• O-RAN System Testing with Layer 1 Acceleration – carried out at two PlugFest venues
• O-RAN White-box Hardware diversity ecosystem – carried out at one PlugFest venue
• Open Fronthaul Transport Testing with multiple O-RUs – carried out at one PlugFest venue

O-RAN Global PlugFest Spring 2024 engages 20 hosts with over 40 companies and institutions that announced participation at the event.

Hosts of O-RAN Global PlugFest Spring 2024 include:

• Asia & Pacific OTIC in Singapore in cooperation with North American OTIC in Boston Area (Northeastern University) in USA
• Auray OTIC and Security Lab in Taiwan
• Digital Catapult in UK
• EURECOM in France
• Japan OTIC in Japan
• Korea Telecom in South Korea
• Kyrio OTIC in USA
• LG Uplus in South Korea
• Nakao Lab in Japan
• Joint North American PlugFest in USA with University of New Hampshire, AT&T, DISH, NIST, Northeastern University, Rutgers University/WINLAB, University of Utah, and Verizon
• XNET in cooperation with Asia & Pacific OTIC by ritt7layers

The PlugFest is scheduled to finish and results to be announced at the beginning of June 2024.

"O-RAN ALLIANCE continues to organize its global PlugFests to facilitate the progress of open RAN industry from specifications to commercialization," said Brian Daly, Co-chair of O-RAN Technical Steering Committee, and AVP, AT&T Services Inc. "PlugFest themes chosen by operators help to focus efforts on accelerating commercial readiness of priority areas. We welcome high interest from the O-RAN ecosystem to participate and make progress in testing and integration at O-RAN PlugFests."

About O-RAN ALLIANCE
The O-RAN ALLIANCE is a world-wide community of more than 300 mobile operators, vendors, and research & academic institutions operating in the Radio Access Network (RAN) industry. As the RAN is an essential part of any mobile network, the O-RAN ALLIANCE's mission is to re-shape the industry towards more intelligent, open, virtualized and fully interoperable mobile networks. The new O-RAN specifications enable a more competitive and vibrant RAN supplier ecosystem with faster innovation to improve user experience. O-RAN based mobile networks at the same time improve the efficiency of RAN deployments as well as operations by mobile operators. To achieve this, the O-RAN ALLIANCE publishes new RAN specifications, releases open software for the RAN, and supports its members in integration and testing of their implementations.

For more information, please visit www.o-ran.org.

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