In what might be seen as the Finnish company bowing to the pressure from mobile operators wanting to diversify their supplier range, Nokia said the Dallas centre is designed to support the development of partnerships among open radio access network (open RAN) vendors.
It will help with the verification, introduction and launch of compliant solutions to market, said the company.
Pasi Toivanen (pictured), head of edge cloud at Nokia, commented: “Our new O-RAN collaboration and testing centre highlights our continued commitment towards O-RAN and the development of new solutions. At our Dallas offices we have created a collaborative and secure working environment that offers best-in-class facilities to help our partners achieve their goal.”
Many operators have promoted the move towards open RAN as a way of expanding the supply chain beyond what is effectively a duopoly in many western countries: just Ericsson and Nokia, now that Huawei and ZTE are blocked.
Nokia said that vendors will be able to execute interoperability tests and end-to-end testing at the Dallas centre. The company said: “The project is the latest in Nokia’s continued commitment to O-RAN, vRAN [virtual RAN] and edge cloud innovation.”
The company said it plans to open similar facilities at its other global offices around the world in the future.
It emphasised that the centre “also places particular emphasis on the protection of participants’ intellectual property and confidential material. It provides work area isolation of vendor personnel, equipment and data through access controls, separate secure work areas, and network segregation.”
