Turk Telekom and Juniper Research struck a partnership agreement to develop Open RAN 5G technologies, a move to accelerate innovations and ecosystems in the technology.
In a statement, Juniper Research said the exclusive global licensing agreement with Turk Telekom subsidiary Nestia, will see it gain “leading-edge Radio Intelligent Controller (RIC) technology”, including source codes, patents and exclusive rights to develop and sell products and solutions that integrate with RIC.
There will be a permanent transfer of technical domain experts from Nestia to Juniper to support RIC integration into the Juniper product portfolio, further enhancing Juniper’s Open Ran and 5G expertise.
Turk Telekom committed to buying Juniper products and solutions for its Open RAN and 5G deployment. This includes an initial proof-of-concept project expected to be unveiled in late 2021 which will utilise RIC technology and Juniper’s broader portfolio.
Umit Onal, Turk Telekom CEO said: “We have been working for a long time on cutting-edge RIC technologies that will play an active role in setting global 5G standards. The software developed by Netsia provides high capacity, scalable, flexible, personalized network, and service solutions for the mobile communication needs of the future. We have achieved a strong synergy with the combination of Netsia's know-how and productisation capacity with Juniper's customer network and geographic reach. As Turk Telekom Group, we are incredibly happy to offer our products, which are the achievements of Turkish engineering, to the world.”
“Deploying OpenRAN is an integral part of a service provider’s open network architectural journey, removing the traditional hardware lock-in and moving to vendor-neutral hardware- and software-defined technology. Juniper’s onboarding of the Radio Intelligent Controller in partnership with Turk Telekom is vital for boosting the Open RAN ecosystem and driving improved service profitability and experience for service providers”, added Ray Mota, ACG Research principal analyst.