End-to-End 5G Open RAN Starter Kit Launched
RANsemi, a British wireless semiconductor company founded in 2023 by former Picocom President Peter Claydon, has launched a new 5G Open RAN testing solution aimed at accelerating the development of 5G radio access networks (RANs), with a specific focus on small cells.
The 5G Open RAN Starter Kit provides developers and engineers with an end-to-end platform combining all the elements of a 5G network from Core to UE and. RANsemi claims this will greatly simplify the task of developing and testing Open RAN Radio Unit (O-RU) or Distributed (DU) functionality, and shorten time-to-market.
The announcement comes as the Open RAN industry faces calls to improve and optimise the testing and certification process for new products and solutions. This is particularly important if Open RAN is to capitalise on emerging market opportunities like Private Networks and Neutral Hosts, which many industry analysts estimate will be worth almost $20 billion combined by 2028.
“With the launch of our 5G Open RAN Starter Kit, we are taking a significant step toward democratising 5G system development,” said Oliver Davies, VP of Marketing at RANsemi. “It offers a fully configured, optimised private 5G network out-of-the-box, allowing organisations to jumpstart their 5G projects for lab-based evaluation and system demonstrations without the typical complexity and time investment barriers.”
The RANsemi Open RAN Starter Kit is a compact O-RAN split 7.2 5G end-to-end system that enables users to rapidly evaluate and deploy 3GPP 5G NR and O-RAN Alliance compliant systems in the n78 band. In addition to RANsemi SoCs and software, the platform features key components from industry-leading vendors, including SRS, Texas Instruments and iCana. The end-to-end platform meets the diverse needs of the 5G Open RAN small cell ecosystem yet allows companies to reconfigure and adapt it to their requirements.
