STL & ASOCS co-demonstrate RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) power at Airtel plugfest

With the increasing need for wireless networks to support scale, latency, and agility across consumer and enterprise networks, there is an ongoing drive for building open source radio networks.

Such networks will enable 4G and upcoming 5G networks to handle and balance a much higher amount of load in the network with centralized and virtualized controls through software-defined networks.

Recently, Bharti Airtel hosted India’s first plugfest for the O-RAN ALLIANCE. Partaking in this plugfest, STL  successfully demonstrated the power of opensource networks. 

STL and ASOCS partnered together at the event to demonstrate mobility load balancing with near real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) and O-RAN E2 interface testing of RIC.

STL and ASOCS demonstrated RAN Intelligent controller (RIC) interworking with Open-eNodeB (O-eNB).  Scope included demonstrating Mobile Load Balancing (MLB) and E2 setup and subscriptions as per the O-RAN standard. The MLB handled from the edge of the network through RIC platform is helpful in steering the traffic to improve network efficiency in an O-RAN based network architecture.

“This is an incredible feat in establishing RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) platform on a fully virtualized 4G/5G stack with ASOCS," said Rajesh Gangadhar, CTO, Access Solutions, STL. He further added, “The demos delivered to the O-RAN community truly demonstrates the different possible scenarios of 4G/5G networks could be deployed with open and disaggregated RAN and will no doubt help operators expedite commercial 5G enterprise and macro network rollouts.”

“We are proud of this achievement made possible by our close and intensive work with our strategic partner - STL”, said Gilad Garon, CEO of ASOCS. “The demonstrations of intelligent RAN based on O-RAN standards in India plugfest hosted by Bharti Airtel is yet another step in the unbundling of macro networks worldwide and has specific significance in India’s quest for “made in India” cellular networks starting with 4G (LTE) and moving on the same foundation to 5G”.

Remarking on the advanced approach of the STL-ASOCS demo at the Plugfest, Randeep Sekhon, CTO at Bharti Airtel said, “We are pleased to partner with the O-RAN community. We believe this engagement and the recent India Plugfest will contribute further to building 5G systems with open network architecture.”