Calnex announced today that it has become a member of the O-RAN Alliance. The O-RAN Alliance works on the evolution of radio access networks (RANs) around the world. Future RANs will be built on a foundation of virtualized network elements, white-box hardware and standardized interfaces.

Calnex is a world leader in testing network timing and sync, a critical piece in mobile network infrastructure. Joining the O-RAN alliance allows Calnex to supplement its work in bodies like the International Telecoms Union (ITU-T) and the Telecoms Infrastructure Project (TIP) to work on defining standards for timing in mobile networks.

One of the key challenges in the evolution of mobile networks to run on white-box hardware with dis-aggregated virtualized elements is in maintaining tight timing & sync performance as required by the mobile networks. O-RAN, ITU-T and TIP are all involved in the work to enable and to deploy this and Calnex will contribute significantly to this effort.

Jeff Wright, Calnex’s VP of Engineering said “the sheer amount of work involved in developing specifications, standards, recommendations and architectures for future mobile networks means multiple industry bodies are involved. Calnex’s membership of the O-RAN Alliance allows us to actively contribute to all aspects of this work.”