O-RAN Alliance

O-RAN Alliance is an organization of mobile network operators, vendors, and academic institutions that operate in the radio access network (RAN) industry. It was founded in February 2018 by the companies AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, and Orange. In August 2018, it was established as a German entity.

Summary of the O-Ran Alliance

O-RAN's goal is to shift the RAN industry towards more virtualized and interoperable mobile networks, which it hopes will result in a more competitive RAN supplier ecosystem.

O-RAN welcomes academic and research institutes, among other organizations, to be members or contributors to the Alliance by shaping its architecture. O-RAN has two membership categories: member, which is for mobile network operators, and contributor or academic contributor. Contributor includes manufacturers, vendors, research institutes, service providers, and all network operators that are not classified as mobile network operators. Academic contributor includes academic institutions, non-industry affiliated research institutes, or other non-profit organizations chosen at the O-RAN board's discretion. Members pay an annual fee, which is based on their membership type and the organization they're part of.

Mobile network operator members of O-RAN Alliance include Bell Canada, Dish, Vodafone, Telefónica, U.S. Cellular, and more. Contributors and academic contributors of O-RAN include many organizations and universities like Subex, Oracle, Microsoft, University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, Lenovo, and Lockheed Martin.