Japanese operator KDDI announced it will join the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), with plans to open what it claimed would be the first community lab in the country in the coming months.

In a statement, KDDI said the lab would be a development and verification centre to accelerate telecoms innovations for TIP members. There are currently 12 TIP Community Labs in seven countries.

Aaron Bernstein, TIP board member, said the labs are a core component of thes development model, where members come together to build and test new technologies and share what is learned from their respective organisations.

TIP was founded in 2016 by Facebook, Nokia, Intel, Deutsche Telekom, EE, and a number of other mobile operators.

Before the launch of the new TIP Community Lab, the operator said it will work with KDDI Research to start evaluating transport facilities based on disaggregated platforms.

KDDI will co-lead a new sub-group within TIP’s Open Optical Packet Transport project group. The initiative will focus on open and disaggregation routing platforms for transport networks, it said.

Japan’s fourth mobile operator Rakuten Mobile joined TIP in November 2019.