NEC is playing the field in a bid to grow beyond its traditional footprint in Japan, inking deals with operators, consortiums, hyperscalers, and chipmakers to boost its prospects in 5G infrastructure. 

Qualcomm, the latest such partner, is now collaborating with NEC to develop a 5G open and virtualized distributed unit (DU), the companies announced today. The DU will be powered by the Qualcomm X100 5G RAN Accelerator Card and developed under the 5G Open RAN Ecosystem, an initiative formed earlier this year and led by NTT DoCoMo to foster the advancement of open radio access network (RAN) architecture.

The pairing puts the two aspiring vendors in line to capture a greater share of the RAN market if open RAN adoption picks up in the coming years. 

Qualcomm last year vowed to break into the open RAN chipset business with a portfolio of silicon, system-on-a-chip (SoC) based products, and reference architecture shipping in the first half of 2022. The U.S. chipmaker is targeting millimeter-wave (mmWave) and sub-6 GHz spectrum infrastructure. 

Multiple global operators have applauded Qualcomm’s return to the RAN market and its push into open RAN, including Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, and Vodafone. Qualcomm also previously said it would publish a technical blueprint by the end of this year for vendors to build 5G virtualized RAN (vRAN) and open RAN equipment with its silicon. 

Vodafone joined that effort out of the gate, but other operators and vendors are expected to get involved in the project, which could position Qualcomm’s 5G open RAN silicon as an alternative in some instances to Intel’s FlexRAN reference architecture. 

NTT DoCoMo’s Asia Pacific centric alliance is progressing on a similar track. Naoki Tani, EVP and CTO at NTT DoCoMo, previously said the operator is especially looking forward to Qualcomm’s “DU baseband hardware accelerators, which are critical in real-time processing.”

Meanwhile, as most of NEC’s activities remain in Japan, the company’s myriad partnerships could position the vendor and IT services provider for a bigger role as 5G and hybrid cloud deployments gain momentum.

NEC recently expanded its work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to target gains in 5G, government services, and hybrid cloud. It joined forces with Samsung in 2018 to partner on the development of 5G mobile infrastructure and IT services.

Rakuten Mobile tapped NEC in 2019 to help it develop a fully virtualized, software-defined mobile network in Japan and later selected NEC to supply a 5G standalone core. NEC also more recently neared the final stages of certifying Red Hat OpenShift for its 5G core offering amid plans to integrate the Kubernetes-based platform into 5G RAN equipment and software, and mobile edge computing.

Cisco also expanded its long-standing integrator partnership with NEC earlier this year to include the deployment of 5G IP transport network equipment.

Qualcomm is the latest in a long line of NEC partners in this realm.

“With the significant opportunity poised by open and virtualized RAN, Qualcomm is committed to driving more innovative and competitive cellular infrastructure to enable operators and industry verticals to efficiently deploy 5G network coverage and capacity where it is needed most with our comprehensive Qualcomm 5G RAN Platforms,” Durga Malladi, Qualcomm’s SVP and GM of 5G, mobile broadband and infrastructure, said in a statement. “Joining forces with NEC is at the heart of advancing the cellular ecosystem and accelerating the innovation cycle to enable the fast track of deploying modern networks at scale.”