Can NEC’s New RIC Convert Near Real-Time Sceptics?

NEC has just launched a new Near Real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (Near-RT RIC) ahead of next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The O-RAN Alliance-compliant vRAN platform also comes with its own set of xApps. The news could provide the Near-RT RIC ecosystem with a much needed boost in a year that has seen its momentum stall.

Whether the Near-RT RIC is actually necessary for Open RAN remains a topic of debate. Ericsson and Samsung have so far chosen not to support it, arguing that the Non-RT RIC already provides enough programmability and automation for the RAN.

North American Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) seem to agree. The updated ATIS Open RAN Minimum Viable Profile (MVP), released this year, still does not include support for the Near-RT RIC. This MVP outlines the core technical requirements for Open RAN that all North American operators share.

Recent industry shake-ups have added further uncertainty. With HPE acquiring Juniper Networks and Broadcom acquiring VMware, both key Near-RT RIC players, there are now questions about their long-term commitment to the technology. This has left Nokia as the only major network vendor actively supporting Near-RT RIC.

The limited industry backing makes it harder for xApp developers to deploy their solutions in live networks. Meanwhile, the rApp market is already gaining traction, thanks to initiatives like Ericsson’s rApp store, which offers developers a faster path to market.

With its new Near-RT RIC, NEC is stepping in to help unlock the potential of real-time RAN management. Unlike the Non-RT RIC, which operates on longer timescales, the Near-RT RIC can react to network conditions in under a second, offering more dynamic control.

In its announcement, NEC highlighted several key features of its RIC, including:

• Load balancing between cells – improving network efficiency by shifting traffic between cells based on real-time demand.
• SLA guarantees for network slices – optimising radio resources to maintain service quality even in congested conditions.
• AI-driven latency management – dynamically adjusting radio settings to ensure reliable, low-latency connections.

By separating RIC control from traditional RAN functions and running it on a virtualised platform that follows O-RAN specifications, NEC aims to make it easier to integrate AI-driven network innovations.

The company has already demonstrated its RIC’s capabilities in a 5G vRAN test environment, showing how its high-reliability functions can significantly reduce latency issues in mobile robot control scenarios.

Using 5G vRAN, NEC built a network for remotely controlling three mobile robots in an indoor environment and conducted a demonstration experiment of an RIC application that achieves high reliability in terms of acceptable latency. By dynamically optimising radio control for each mobile robot terminal, NEC demonstrated that the frequency of packets exceeding the acceptable latency could be reduced to less than 1/6 of the frequency when RIC was not used.

Whether operators view these advantages as mission-critical enough to drive large-scale deployments remains to be seen.