NTT and NEC agreed to form a capital and business alliance for the purpose of joint research and development and the global rollout of ICT products utilizing innovative optical and wireless technologies.
Through this alliance, NTT and NEC will jointly develop cutting-edge technologies and globally competitive products that utilize both companies’ strengths and originate from Japan.
To promote open architectures such as O-RAN and to realize the IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network) initiative, NTT and NEC will set up a research and development structure at an early stage of their alliance. The companies will develop and sell globally a compact Digital Signal Processing (DSP) circuit — featuring both world leading performance and low power consumption, as well as quality that meets market needs and greater value from the customer point of view — plus optical transmission equipment incorporating this DSP circuit.
Working with global operators and communication equipment vendors, the companies will promote O-RAN Alliance specifications while developing and selling globally competitive products compliant with such O-RAN specifications. The companies will also develop innovative technologies and optical/wireless devices contributing to the realization of NTT's IOWN initiative. As part of the development, the companies will enable greater capacity, higher functionality and lower costing submarine cable systems, large capacity, low latency and automatic/autonomous space communication, and more sophisticated technologies to ensure infrastructure network security.
