Japan-headquartered NEC set up an open RAN laboratory in India to strengthen its capabilities and accelerate global deployment of 5G.

In a statement, the vendor said the facility will speed development of its “5G open ecosystem by pre-integrating partners’ open RAN components to form end-to-end commercial products according to customer-specific needs”.

“The lab also will be responsible for post deployment troubleshooting, life-cycle management” and ongoing integration.

Initial partners include Altiostar, GigaTera Communications and MTI.

NEC said it plans to expand its ecosystem by adding new partners to “accelerate operators’ commercial adoption of open RAN”.

Last month, the company established a global open RAN centre of excellence in the UK to support its project delivery capability.

The company said the centre is responsible for business and product development support, project execution and technical support, and is designed to help operators worldwide introduce open RAN.

NEC’s 5G business took a significant stride when Rakuten Mobile selected it as an equipment supplier in mid-2019.

In June, Japanese operator NTT announced it would acquire about a 5 per cent stake in NEC for JPY60 billion ($577.2 million) and establish an R&D alliance covering next-generation network technologies.