Kit vendor Ericsson will inject €200 million over the next three years into its Athlone facility in central Ireland, in order to research open network management and automation capabilities for 5G.
The benefits of open programmable networks are pitched as “enabling communications service providers (CSPs) to improve operational efficiency, as well as accelerating the global deployment and value generation of 5G Standalone (SA) connectivity through differentiated offerings.” The latter of which presumably means make some more money.
The project – which is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland – aims to advance support for open, multi-vendor, disaggregated and programmable network deployments, and the new investment will focus on the Ericsson Intelligent Automation Platform (EIAP) – which is described as its “open network management and automation platform for multi-vendor and multi-technology 4G and 5G Radio Access Networks (RAN)”.
