ETSI launches new standards group for Open Radio Equipment Interface

May 11, 2010 - PRLog -- ETSI and NGMN are pleased to announce the creation of a new Industry Specification Group (ISG) to develop an interface specification enabling interoperability between elements of base stations of cellular mobile network equipment.

The ETSI ISG on Open Radio equipment Interface (ISG ORI) will specify an open interoperable interface for Radio Equipment in distributed mobile cellular base stations – GSM™, UMTS™ and LTE™.  

In general, mobile radio base stations consist of a Base Band Unit (BBU) and a Radio Equipment (RE), which, in a distributed base station architecture, is a Remote Radio Head (RRH) or Integrated Active Antenna. Use of distributed Radio Equipment can lead to significant cost savings for a mobile operator, as well as offering a greater level of flexibility in network design and deployment. The interface which will be defined by the ISG ORI is an important step towards realising these benefits through widespread deployment of distributed Radio Equipment.

ISG ORI is a direct result of requirements work undertaken by the NGMN Alliance, in their OBRI (Open BBU RRH Interface) project. The ISG is strongly supported by the NGMN Alliance. Leading mobile network operators and telecom equipment vendors have agreed to become founding members of the ISG. The current members and participants of the ISG are: Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T Global Network Services, Deutsche Telekom, DoCoMo Communications Labs Europe, Ericsson, Freescale Semiconductors, Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe, Huawei Technologies, Kathrein-Werke, Motorola, NGMN, Nokia Siemens Networks, NTT DoCoMo, Radiocomp, Reverb Networks, Rohde & Schwarz, Telecom Italia, Ubidyne, Vodafone and ZTE. Other companies are welcome to join the ISG, whose first meeting will take place from 25 to 27 May in Turin, Italy, hosted by Telecom Italia.

ETSI's Director-General, Dr Walter Weigel, said, "This ISG marks a new form of co-operation between ETSI and the NGMN Alliance. The fact that the Alliance has chosen ETSI for performing this work should be considered as a strong vote of confidence in ETSI's ISG concept, and in the quality of service we offer."  

Dr. Peter Meissner, Operating Officer of the NGMN Alliance, said, "The Board of the NGMN Alliance highly appreciates the broad vendor commitment and support for the activities to drive open interface specifications. The NGMN Alliance will follow the future specification work closely and will actively participate in the ISG to enable the early implementation of this essential specification in future mobile radio access networks.”

About ETSI Industry Specification Groups

The Industry Specification Group (ISG) is an innovative and flexible standards mechanism offered by ETSI, which builds upon the strengths of ETSI’s established processes, the professional support provided via the ETSI Portal, and its industry-leading IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) regime. ETSI Industry Specification Groups operate alongside the existing structure of Technical Committees and Working Groups and supplement ETSI's conventional standards development process. ISGs provide a mechanism for the speedy preparation of technical requirements or specifications for well-defined, specific issues, typically in response to a need expressed by a subset of the ETSI membership. The ORI ISG is the sixth ISG established in less than two years by ETSI.

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About ETSI
ETSI produces globally-applicable ICT standards, including fixed, mobile, radio, converged, aeronautical, broadcast and IP technologies. An independent, not-for-profit association, ETSI's 740 member companies come from 62 countries worldwide.