Linux Foundation and National Spectrum Consortium Collaborate on Open RAN Architecture and Testing

The Linux Foundation and the National Spectrum Consortium (NSC) have announced a collaboration to accelerate innovation in open radio networks (RAN) within the United States. The two organizations will work together to establish an open source reference software architecture for Open RAN, which will lower barriers to entry for academic and commercial R&D. They will also collaborate on prototype projects that will be recommended to the Department of Defense (DoD) for funding and help develop project scopes of work that include milestones such as interoperability, security requirements, licensing and contribution requirements, ecosystem requirements, and CI/CD. The collaboration will involve specific Linux Foundation projects such as LF Networking and OpenSSF. This partnership is expected to increase vendor diversity and competition, prevent vendor lock-in, increase innovation in wireless networking technology, lower deployment and operational costs, and even increase security and energy efficiency. The Linux Foundation will provide open and neutral governance support, while the NSC will share its working base of stakeholders across government, industry, and academia to further prototyping and R&D capabilities.