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Viavi’s VALOR will be the first TIP-authorized test lab
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Startups and small companies developing software or hardware are welcome to use the lab when it opens later this year
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It’s all about advancing industry standards through collaboration, according to Viavi and TIP
Certainly, the market for open radio access networks (RAN) hasn’t grown as fast as many had hoped, leaving disgruntled investors staring at a double-digit decline in revenues in 2023.
However, the market research firm Dell’Oro Group and others remain undeterred, emphasizing the resilience of the open RAN movement. Despite challenges, they still expect operators worldwide will incorporate more openness, virtualization and intelligence into their RAN roadmaps.
It’s in that spirit that endeavors like the U.S. government-funded Viavi Automated Lab-as-a-Service for Open RAN (VALOR) are getting underway. The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in January awarded Viavi a grant from the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund’s first Notice of Funding Opportunity. The $21.7 million grant for VALOR covers a three-year performance period.
This week, Viavi Solutions and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) announced a collaboration aimed at expanding the testing capabilities of VALOR, which will become the first TIP-authorized test lab for open RAN.
Ian Wong, director of RF and Wireless within the Viavi CTO office, gave us a rundown on what it all means. He’s also co-chair of the Test and Integration Focus Group within the O-RAN Alliance.
How the collaboration started
Once VALOR was granted NTIA funding earlier this year, that led to a conversation with TIP because it seemed like a good opportunity for collaboration, he explained.
VALOR is a professional O-RAN Lab-as-a-Service that can be leveraged by TIP community members, “which is in a way very aligned with our mission as well of really opening up O-RAN testing to the whole ecosystem, especially smaller vendors,” Wong told Fierce.
The lab will be in Viavi’s Chandler, Ariz., headquarters, where construction is underway. The official opening and ribbon cutting is set for early October, he said.
The lab is both virtual and physical. “If you’re a new vendor with a new product and going through early test and validation phases, you can get access to VALOR, either virtually through the cloud or by physically right here in Arizona,” he said.
Viavi’s already engaged with some early customers, but Wong declined to name them because they’re not yet public.
Viavi partners that are public include Rohde & Schwarz for RF instrumentation and ETS-Lindgren as the main supplier for the radio unit (RU) test chamber that they’re building in the VALOR lab. There will be testing capabilities for distributed units (DU) and centralized units (CU) as well, he said.
“VALOR is really meant to solve the test needs for pretty much the whole O-RAN [ecosystem] – RU, CU, DU, end-to-end security. It’s got the full suite of tools for O-RAN,” Wong said.
The “Made in America” spirit of the grant from NTIA means the test facility will be open for any operator or vendor. It’s a shared resource and there’s a tiered fee structure. Viavi is also opening up the lab to academic customers to use for free, according to Wong.
A big part of this testing is to ensure the products adhere to the O-RAN Alliance specifications. “We call it pre-certification,” he said. “Our CTO calls it the ‘pre-SATs,’” so that they’re ready and prepared to go through the certification.
TIP is a U.S. organization that was started by Facebook in 2016 that includes various projects centered around stimulating connectivity around the world. Viavi is a member of TIP.
A coup for TIP is AT&T’s VP of RAN Technology Rob Soni joined its Board of Directors a couple months ago. Vodafone, Meta, Intel, Telefónica, DT Group, BT, Dell Technologies, Orange and MTN remain on the board.
How are things shaping up?
Getting startups – or anybody, for that matter – into the open RAN ecosystem is not something that happens overnight. “I would say it’s definitely a long game,” Wong said, noting that’s why the U.S. government and NTIA specifically are trying to boost the ecosystem through phased funding opportunities over a number of years.
A lot of companies invested in O-RAN are in both TIP and the O-RAN Alliance. European operators especially are supportive of both organizations. In addition, the O-RAN Alliance and TIP have an existing agreement on collaborating, and there are ongoing discussions between the two on how to refresh that.
However, between O-RAN and TIP, neither party wants confusion or too much overlap. From Wong's perspective, “they want to be as complementary as possible,” he said.