ASOCS Ltd., a pioneer in Radio Access Network (RAN) virtualization, announces it has joined the Cisco-led Open vRAN ecosystem aiming to accelerate the viability and adoption of Open vRAN solutions.

As demand for bandwidth continues to grow and ARPU remains low, operators are looking to eliminate reliance on expensive proprietary hardware platforms and reduce CapEx and OpEx based on a virtualized, software-based network architecture.

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) laid the groundwork for this new architecture to emerge, several industry efforts have been working specifically on the disaggregation and virtualization of the RAN, and solutions have matured. An open, standards-based virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) is a key enabler for this new architecture and the creation of a dynamic multi-vendor ecosystem. Now the industry is at the point where it needs to accelerate the adoption of these solutions. The Open vRAN ecosystem formed by Cisco is designed to accelerate the viability and adoption of open vRAN solutions.

"We are excited to see Cisco take the lead on creating an ecosystem that will accelerate the adoption of open vRAN solutions, giving operators the agility and performance they need while reducing capital and operational expenditures" said Eran Bello, Corporate CCO & GM, ASOCS Inc. "We share Cisco's vision for the future and are excited to join the ecosystem to further accelerate the deployment of an open RAN architecture."

Through this initiative, Cisco and the other ecosystem parties plan to focus on assembling viable solutions that build on an open and modular architecture, drawing from existing industry efforts that will support a variety of use cases. The work of this ecosystem will be customer-driven, leveraging input from leading operators around the world.

"Our aim for this ecosystem of partners is to collaborate to deliver innovative solutions ready for commercial deployment," said Kishen Mangat, VP and GM, Cisco Service Provider Mobility. "We're excited to have ASOCS join the ecosystem and together with the ecosystem parties, we are executing on our plans to develop a customer-centric ecosystem focused on accelerating innovation and enabling new business models to dramatically lower costs, add capacity and improve network performance."

ASOCS' virtual Base Station technology transforms the traditional base station into a software centric solution, providing full virtualization of all base station layers and functions. Our vRAN solution, Cyrus, is being deployed by operators around the world as it delivers on the promise of openness and scale at a lower TCO.