O-RAN ALLIANCE has been founded in February 2018 by AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DOCOMO and Orange. It has been established as a German entity in August 2018.
Since then, O-RAN ALLIANCE has become a world-wide community of mobile network operators, vendors, and research & academic institutions operating in the Radio Access Network (RAN) industry.
O-RAN ALLIANCE’s mission is to re-shape the RAN industry towards more intelligent, open, virtualised and fully interoperable mobile networks. The new O-RAN standards will enable a more competitive and vibrant RAN supplier ecosystem with faster innovation to improve user experience. O-RAN based mobile networks will at the same time improve the efficiency of RAN deployments as well as operations by the mobile operators.
To achieve this, O-RAN ALLIANCE is active in 3 main streams:
The specification effort => new standards for open and intelligent RAN
O-RAN Software Community => open software development for the RAN (in cooperation with the Linux Foundation)
Testing and integration effort => supporting O-RAN member companies in testing and integration of their O-RAN implementations
O-RAN focuses on technical aspects of the RAN and stays neutral in any political, governmental or other areas of any country or region. O-RAN does not get involved in any policy-related topics.
