03 February 2025
USAID’s Better Access and Connectivity (BEACON) project has soft-launched the first Open RAN laboratory in the Philippines, in collaboration with international and local telco industry stakeholders, and is targeting a full launch in May..jpg?lu=545)
The US$8 million lab – which is being funded by BEACON in collaboration with the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman Electronics and Electrical Engineering Institute (EEEI) and Asia Open RAN Academy (AORA) – has been established at the UP campus in Quezon City to serve as a center of collaboration on training and research, workforce development, and performance testing of Open RAN in the Philippines.
The lab is being built by Viavi Solutions using its Automated Lab-as-a-Service for Open RAN (VALOR), which Viavi says provides an innovative, highly automated hybrid testing laboratory-as-a-service (LaaS) for Open RAN testing and evaluation. UP EEEI will provide training initiatives and operations at the lab. The Open RAN lab is also supported by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), as well as PLDT, its wireless unit Smart Communications and Globe Telecom.
Smart’s head of network build and implementation, Debbie Hu, said the lab's systems will be made available for PLDT and Smart to support the companies' technical capability development, testing, research, and collaborative studies essential in paving the way for future innovations.
