NTT DOCOMO successfully completed 5G Open RAN Lab Trial with StarHub, demonstrating commercial readiness of OREX solutions

NTT DOCOMO, INC. (DOCOMO), along with its group companies NTT DOCOMO ASIA Pte. Ltd. (DCMA) and OREX SAI, INC. (OREX SAI),
is proud to announce that it has successfully completed its OREX brand 5G Open RAN Lab Trial with StarHub Limited (StarHub),
demonstrating its commercial readiness .

The Open RAN journey between StarHub and DOCOMO, beginning in June 2023, involved numerous discussions, both remote and face-to-face, and was followed by a three-day workshop at DOCOMO’s HQ and tour of DOCOMO’s R&D Center at YRP in Japan in January 2024, leading up to the Lab Trial agreement announced on Feb 26, 2024.

The trial, which was hosted in StarHub’s Data Center in Singapore, started in April and marked its finale with a demonstration to StarHub’s CTO, Ayush Sharma on August 28th. Representatives from StarHub, OREX SAI, DCMA, Fujitsu Limited (Fujitsu), and Keysight Technologies (Keysight) were also present for the demonstration. OREX Open RAN solution in the 5G SA mode was finally connected to StarHub’s commercial 5G Core with IPsec establishment,where very high throughput (DL 1.295Mbps and UL 73.5Mbps) and low latency (15ms) were observed on speed test sites, and voice services (via EPS fallback) and SMS were also successfully verified. RIC demos and load/security testing were performed, further demonstrating commercial readiness of OREX solutions.
The OREX Open RAN system for the trial consisted of Fujitsu’s base station software (CU/DU), Wind River’s cloud infrastructure,
NVIDIA Aerial Accelerated RAN, Dell Technologies’ servers and a combination of Fujitsu and SOLiD INC.’s RU’s, validating a multi-vendor framework, which can only be realized by Open RAN. The trial also received support from Keysight Technologies, which enabled the load and security tests to be run with the Keysight UE Simulator ahead of commercial environment availability.

OREX SAI is thrilled to be a part of this groundbreaking milestone, in which it was the first time to test OREX solutions against a commercial 5GC, and thanks StarHub for taking lead in Open RAN promotion and their partnership. “On top of giving MNOs the freedom of choice and lowering operational costs, Open RAN allows MNOs to keep up with the latest technology, freeing them from any particular provider’s roadmap,” said Sadayuki Abeta, OREX Evangelist and Chief Open RAN Strategist of DOCOMO and Chief Technology Officer of OREX SAI. “This opens the door to an infinite number of possibilities in how we build networks around the world, and DOCOMO and OREX SAI are excited to partner with StarHub in this endeavor.”

Moving forward, OREX SAI, the face of DOCOMO’s Open RAN business, hopes to enhance the momentum in the collaboration efforts with StarHub towards commercial deployment and continue pushing the envelope while making Open RAN history.