Rural Independent Network Alliance (RINA Wireless) — a rural tech service provider — partnered with Mavenir to expand rural 5G coverage through its small footprint containerized evolved packet core (EPC). 

RINA will service the core architecture, allowing 4G customers “a platform for a cost-efficient, low-touch, flexible path to a 5G SA network,” Mavenir announced in a press release.

Loris Zaia, Mavenir’s VP of sales, told SDxCentral that “[RINA] provides this managed service core solution so that smaller operators that may have … 50 sites, or even less, can actually buy a service and not have to buy their own core, so it really helps them get the cost down to a level that’s affordable.” 

“It's also a really quick way for them to get to market because you've already got an established core,” he added, “so you’re basically just connecting through VPN, and you can turn up your service fairly quickly.”

Mavenir GM Ashok Khuntia stated, “Our focus here is to enable RINA Wireless to deploy future-proof cloud-enabled technology bringing reliable, cost-effective service and new connectivity to underserved rural America.”

“I think there's a strong push in the U.S. to try and reestablish a strong ecosystem of U.S.-based companies that can really be successful in this space, so we're getting a lot of support there,” Zaia said. 

Mavenir’s 5G expansion comes with their converged packet core solution, which aims to create multi-generational support through a fully containerized packet core portfolio. Now, their collaborative evolved packet core (EPC) will enable “RINA Wireless to deploy remote gateways for managing local traffic breakouts, thereby reducing the costs of transport and latency,” Mavenir stated. This now offers RINA expansion capabilities with mobile and fixed-wireless access (FWA) in new remote areas like Alaska.

The Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment (BEAD) program, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, holds $42 billion in support for those lacking affordable internet. But as Zaia explained, “these FCC applications, the rip and replace, they're a very, very formal process with tedious amounts of details. We spend a lot of time understanding the various federal funds — whether it's 4G or 5G — but we've mostly helped facilitate.”  

RINA has partnered with big players before, including a partnership with Ericsson for the CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) buildout solution back in 2020. Carrying a similar mission to bridge the digital divide, their collaboration looked at aiding rural carriers to effectively manage “their networks, deploy services faster, and meet buildout requirements,” as stated by Ericsson’s Head of Customer Unit Regional Carriers Rob Johnson.

“Our solution actually scales down to a very, very small footprint, where you’ve got less than 100,000 subs - less than 50,000 subs,” Zaia explained. “That's the big advantage that we bring to the table for the smaller operators and rural markets that can't afford that huge footprint out of the gate.” 

Mavenir’s Senior Sales Director Virgilio Fiorese added that working with microservices “actually helps us to reduce the footprint because we can distribute the network functions in a much better way among the different servers that will build up the cluster.”