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SONIC Labs next phase live following £15 million Government investment

Posted 26 Apr 2022

SONIC Labs next phase live following £15 million Government investment

Following a £15 million investment by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Digital Catapult and Ofcom’s SONIC Labs initiative has entered its next phase. The SONIC Labs programme enables telecoms suppliers to integrate early stage products into working end-to-end systems and enables testing in cutting edge labs and real-world mobile network settings.

SONIC Labs delivers advancements in Open RAN technology, a key pillar in UK Government’s 5G Diversification Strategy. Following SONIC Labs’ initial phase, where seven vendors demonstrated the value of Open-RAN integration, the programme will now be expanded to bring through a further four groups of new Open RAN products over the next two years. The programme’s new phase will include the creation of additional physical lab environments at multiple sites including Digital Catapult and Ofcom, field trial locations and enhanced test and measurement solutions. This is complemented by programmes of work to carry out interoperability experimentation between products, market engagement, and engagement with network and service providers standards and specification development, other testbeds and international activities and organisations.

Diversifying our telecoms network is vital to make UK infrastructure more resilient while unlocking huge benefits for our economy. The Government is backing Open RAN tech to help deliver the incredible benefits of 5G connectivity for people and businesses across the country.

It’s great to see SONIC Labs pressing ahead with its next phase and using our £15 million investment to help make the UK a world-leading destination for innovative and secure mobile
technology.

Julia Lopez Digital Infrastructure Minister

SONIC Labs will involve a variety of stakeholders across the public and private sectors, spanning Government, regulators, industry, vendors and operators, academia, startups and scaleups, and the wider innovation community. This includes strategic engagement with FRANC, the wider 5G Testbeds and Trials portfolio including UK5G and standards development organisations.

We are eager to continue our work with Ofcom and DCMS and the vendors from the first phase of SONIC Labs – Accelleran, Mavenir, Radisys, Benetel, Phluido, Druid and Effnet. We demonstrated the potential of Open RAN technology to deliver new network solutions and by expanding to additional areas of the telecoms ecosystem and multiple testing environments, we will see further opportunities become real through diversification, and encourage more innovation and innovative products.

Joe Butler Chief Technology Officer at Digital Catapult

We’re really pleased to be moving to the next phase of SONIC Labs.

Our testing facility is expanding and we are looking forward to working with Digital Catapult to generate more insights into the exciting potential Open RAN technology offers. This is a truly innovative project that can help shape the telecoms supply chains of the future, and we’re playing our part.

Sachin Jogia Chief Technology Officer at Ofcom

For more information on SONIC Labs please click here. 

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SONIC Labs Old

A commercially-neutral, collaborative environment for testing interoperability and integration of open, disaggregated and software-centric network solutions.