AT&T and Verizon are heading up a newly funded open radio access network (RAN) hardware and software testing initiative that continues the U.S. government’s efforts toward boosting a leadership position in the geopolitically charged open RAN and 5G ecosystem.

The latest efforts are part of a $42 million funding award from the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and its Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund. This will fund the newly established Acceleration of Compatibility and Commercialization for Open RAN Deployments (ACCoRD) project.

The project brings together a group of U.S. carriers, foreign carriers, universities and equipment suppliers to establish a testing, evaluation and research and development center in Dallas and a satellite facility in the Washington, D.C., area. The work will focus on establishing testing protocols for network performance, interoperability, security and research into new open RAN testing methods.

AT&T and Verizon will lead the project and are joined by Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and India’s Reliance Jio. Vendors named include Microsoft, Nokia, Radisys, Airspan, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Rakuten, Samsung, Mavenir, VMware, RedHat, Wind River, Ciena, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Intel, Amdocs, Keysight and Viavi.

Academic institutions involved include The University of Texas at Dallas, which will assist in the maintenance of the Dallas-area center. Virginia Tech, Northeastern University, Iowa State University and Rutgers University will provide neutral laboratory support.

The funding and work are targeted at what continues to be the challenging testing environment for open RAN systems.

“Evaluating how different products integrate with one another is a crucial part of facilitating the more diverse vendor ecosystem that many in the industry and government envision,” Robert Soni, VP of RAN technology at AT&T, wrote in a blog post. “Operators need to have confidence that different vendors’ products will work together at scale before adding them to their network. … The best way to assess integration across the industry is to go big – which is why AT&T and Verizon came together to assemble a broad consortium that includes not only other major network operators like Jio and DoCoMo but also a wide range of vendors.”

“The work resulting from this grant will drive the evolution of multivendor [open RAN] capabilities to a level of reliability and performance our customers have come to expect,” Joe Russo, EVP and president of global network and technology at Verizon, added. “More competition, more innovation, exceptional performance and increased supplier diversity will all be net benefits to operators and customers. ”

Open RAN innovation and security

The funding announcement comes just weeks after the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s “Strengthening American Communications Leadership with Open Radio Access Networks” meeting, which included testimony from a handful of open RAN industry supporters. During the session, Telecom infra project (TIP) Executive Director Kristian Toivo explained that a government-funded open RAN certification process was needed to help bolster development efforts.

“This would be a real opportunity for having a set of configurations that gets certified end-to-end and are made easy to deploy at a cost-effective way,” Toivo said during the proceedings.

The U.S. government has worked toward supporting open RAN testing initiatives.

NTIA recently completed a 5G Challenge event that provided $7 million in “prize money” for vendors showing multi-vendor interoperability across open RAN components. That event was focused on interoperability across radio units (RUs) and combined central units (CUs) and distributed units (DUs).

Adam Koeppe, SVP of network planning at Verizon, in an interview with SDxCentral noted these events have been important toward the industry’s open RAN push.

“You’re seeing a lot of activity with the U.S. government around creating test beds,” Koeppe said. “We’re part of that process and we think it’s actually very beneficial for development of open RAN at scale.”

These open RAN efforts are also increasingly being used to counter 5G and open RAN development from China. Funds for this new project are from the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund, which is a 10-year, $1.5 billion program to support the development of open and interoperable wireless networks and that came out of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.

“Countries like China have amassed a significant share of the global communications equipment industry and are leveraging this dominance to flood the market, including in the U.S., with cheaper, less secure alternatives. That includes equipment from companies like Huawei and ZTE, which are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said during her opening remarks as part of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s meeting.

“Relying on this technology comes with significant risk,” McMorris added. “It could be used by the CCP to surveil Americans, steal people’s personal information and even shut down entire networks. Homes, schools, hospitals, our finance system and the military are all in jeopardy as long as this equipment remains part of our communications infrastructure.”

Dell’Oro Group recently noted that while open RAN revenues declined last year, it expects the ecosystem to grow its impact into the overall RAN market from around 10% in 2024, to as much as 30% by 2028.

“Current growth deceleration combined with the increased acceptance that open RAN is not some kind of magic solution that will significantly alter barriers to entry or overall market concentration, is prompting more questions about the rationale behind open RAN,” Stefan Pongratz, VP and analyst at the Dell’Oro Group, wrote. “The fundamental assumptions shaping the role open RAN will play in this RAN journey have not changed. Over time, operators will incorporate more virtualization, intelligence, automation and O-RAN into their RAN roadmaps.”