STL & ASOCS demonstrate RAN Intelligent Controller at the O-RAN ALLIANCE plugfest hosted by Airtel, India

- 55 major industry players participated at the virtual plugfest across Asia, Europe and North America

- STL & ASOCS  demonstrated the power of RAN^[1] Intelligent Controller (RIC) at this plugfest

GURGAON, India, Nov. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- STL (NSE: STLTECH), an industry leading integrator of digital networks successfully demonstrated the power of open source networks at India's first plugfest for the O-RAN ALLIANCE hosted by Bharti Airtel.  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. Bharti Airtel hosted this global plugfest for O-RAN ALLIANCE in the India region to demonstrate the increasing maturity of O-RAN solutions.

With the increasing need of 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.

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."

About STL - Sterlite Technologies Ltd:

STL is an industry-leading integrator of digital networks.

We design and integrate these digital networks for our customers. With core capabilities in Optical Interconnect, Virtualised Access Solutions, Network Software and System Integration, we are the industry's leading end-to-end solutions provider for global digital networks. We partner with global telecom companies, cloud companies, citizen networks and large enterprises to deliver solutions for their fixed and wireless networks for current and future needs.

We believe in harnessing technology to create a world with next generation connected experiences that transform everyday living. With intense focus on end-to-end network solutions development, we conduct fundamental research in next-generation network applications at our Centre of Excellence. STL has a strong global presence with next-gen optical preform, fibre and cable manufacturing facilities in India, Italy, China and Brazil, optical interconnect capabilities in Italy, along with two software-development centres across India and one data centre design facility in the UK.

About ASOCS

ASOCS is disrupting the traditional RAN market with a cloud-native solution, delivering a 4G and 5G mobile network solution in a single software stack. Our cloud-native mobile connectivity solutions are delivered on commercial off-the-shelf IT hardware and radios based on O-RAN standards, which allow Industrial enterprises and operators alike to benefit from new levels of performance and reliability in Wide Area Networks or localized private networks.  Privately held ASOCS serves industrial enterprises, operators, tower companies and enterprises, and has offices in Israel, India and the United States.

About Bharti Airtel

Headquartered in India, Airtel is a global telecommunications company with operations in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the top three mobile operators globally and its mobile network covers a population of over two billion people. Airtel is India's largest integrated telecom provider and the second largest mobile operator in Africa. At the end of September 2020, Airtel had approx. 440 mn customers across its operations. Airtel's portfolio includes high speed 4G/4.5G mobile broadband, Airtel Xstream Fiber that promises speeds upto 1Gbps, converged digital TV solutions through the Airtel Xstream 4K Hybrid Box, digital payments through Airtel Payments Bank as well as an integrated suite of services across connectivity, collaboration, cloud and security that serves over one million businesses. Airtel's OTT services include Airtel Thanks app for self-care, Airtel Xstream app for video, Wynk Music for entertainment and Airtel BlueJeans for video conferencing. In addition, Airtel has forged strategic partnerships with hundreds of companies across the world to enable the Airtel platform to deliver an array of consumer and enterprise services.

About O-RAN ALLIANCE

The O-RAN ALLIANCE is a world-wide community of more than 230 mobile operators, vendors, and research & academic institutions operating in the ^[1]Radio Access Network (RAN) industry. As the RAN is an essential part of any mobile network, the O-RAN ALLIANCE's mission is to re-shape the industry towards more intelligent, open, virtualized and fully interoperable mobile networks. The new O-RAN standards will enable a more competitive and vibrant RAN supplier ecosystem with faster innovation to improve user experience. O-RAN-compliant mobile networks will at the same time improve the efficiency of RAN deployments as well as operations by the mobile operators. To achieve this, the O-RAN ALLIANCE publishes new RAN specifications, releases open software for the RAN, and supports its members in integration and testing of their implementations. For more information please visit www.o-ran.org .

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