HFCL launches 5G Lab-as-a-Service (LaaS)

New Delhi - HFCL Limited (HFCL), a telecom equipment manufacturer and technology provider, announced the launch of 5G Lab-as-a-Service to accelerate the rollout of 5G solutions and services in the country.

HFCL’s 5G Lab-as-a-Service provides an automated test environment for the private sector, academia, and government to work together on product innovations from concept to reality. The 5G Lab provides a sandbox for rapid prototyping of 5G use cases addressing the needs of various industry segments that include manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, and retail. The 5G Lab will help to create pre-integrated and pre-validated 5G solutions for Low Mobility Large Cells needed for the efficient rollout of rural mobile broadband in the country.

On the occasion, Mahendra Nahata, Managing Director at HFCL said “Integration of multi-vendor, multi-technology systems is complex, and requires validation and optimization of disaggregated components such as hardware, software, cloud and network functions for seamless deployment of 5G networks.”

Telecom operators are adopting multi-vendor networks based on cloud-native technologies for the faster and cost-effective rollout of 5G services and for improved user experience. There is also a need to support multiple frequency bands (sub-6 GHz, millimeter wave) and various deployment scenarios to realize diverse 5G use cases for Consumer, Enterprise, and Industry Verticals.

With a proven track record of delivering fully integrated solutions for telecom networks, HFCL is bringing its system integration expertise to 5G networks. The lab is equipped with a multi-vendor 5G network and industry-leading test tools that include signal analyzer and signal generator for RF conformance tests, O-RAN studio, PTP conformance test equipment and anechoic chamber. HFCL has built an agile DevOps-based test platform for automated lab validation, field deployment, and service automation.

Nahata further added, “HFCL’s state-of-art 5G Lab will enable technology providers such as telecom operators, network equipment providers, system integrators, IoT device manufacturers to analyze, integrate and validate the performance and capabilities of their products and solutions in a real 5G network environment.”

HFCL is offering this 5G Lab-as-a-service (Laas) to technology providers for multiple use cases such as standard compliance and interface testing (3GPP), feature testing including- functional, stress, and performance testing, and proof of concept, pre-development and field testing. LaaS will also be offered for End-user devices, network functions, infrastructure, and application testing. HFCL will also provide access to highly skilled teams with expertise in 5G networks and devices including expertise in DevOps, CI/CD, Kubernetes, and cloud-native technologies that is needed for testing in 5G environments.

From rapid prototyping to end-to-end testing, HFCL’s 5G Lab will enable telecom operators and ecosystem partners to innovate and co-create 5G solutions, services and business models to build new 5G use cases and unlock the benefits of this technology.