“NEC is aiming to solve three fundamental challenges in the market today for Open RAN. Reduce complexity, validate performance, and provide carrier-grade stability” – Patrick Kelly
Appledore Research visited the NEC Open RAN Center of Excellence in London on May 12, 2022.

The London CoE is one of six NEC CoEs around the globe. The others are focused on Radio (in Japan, India, and the US) and IP & Transport networks (in Turkey and Brazil). As such, NEC’s CoE is no mere lab, but a genuine hub for global knowledge sharing, based on its active open RAN projects as well as supporting the market introduction of new offerings (or new partnerships). The team at the CoE is expanding rapidly and is currently home to around seventy-five staff. The CoE site is dedicated to supporting the full Open RAN lifecycle, from pre-release product testing all the way through to live, in production sites.

In this 8-page Research Note, we look in detail at the NEC lab and NEC’s strong ambition to lead the validation of truly open disaggregated Open RAN solutions.