KT, DOCOMO and Fujitsu Test Interop for Open RAN in South Korea

KT and Fujitsu have completed a verification facility at the KT Research and Development Center in Seoul, South Korea, at which the two companies leveraged Fujitsu's Open RAN based 5G base station equipment to successfully test call connection during interoperability trials for open fronthaul.

NTT DOCOMO has provided Fujitsu with technical support throughout the project. With the construction of this new test facility, KT will accelerate the introduction of Open RAN technology to Korea's 5G network.

 As a result of their successful collaboration, the three companies have concluded an agreement, centering on the introduction of software-defined virtualized RAN and RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) in alignment with the '5G Open RAN Ecosystem', an initiative whose participants include NTT DOCOMO and Fujitsu. 

The three companies agree to cooperate towards further activities including the construction of an O-RAN test facility and multi-vendor interoperability testing in Korea. In addition to these activities, the three companies will continue to create market-leading innovations and target the global expansion of Open RAN. 

KT is considering the introduction of multi-vendor Open RAN to reduce equipment procurement and construction costs and to achieve flexible network construction capabilities. To this end, KT and Fujitsu constructed an Open RAN verification facility and conducted testing for multi-vendor interoperability with O-RAN open fronthaul in October 2021. 

For the testing facility, KT has adopted Fujitsu's 5G base stations, which were the world's first O-RAN compliant base stations adopted for commercial service by NTT DOCOMO. Fujitsu supplied KT with 5G base station equipment and provided support during the verification tests, while Fujitsu in turn received NTT DOCOMO's technical support for multi-vendor interoperability testing.