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A new testing lab in Burlington, MA aims to help ensure interoperability of open radio access network (O-RAN) equipment.

The lab, to be known as the Open Testing and Integration Center (OTIC), was established by the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things (WIoT) at Northeastern University. It will operate within the Open6G Hub.

The OTIC has been approved by the O-RAN ALLIANCE with the official designation of “North American OTIC in the Boston Area (Northeastern University).”

O-RAN Testing Lab

The OTIC will provide industry, academia and the federal government with testing, certification and badging capabilities.

“It will ensure multi-vendor interoperability, perform compliance and performance testing and validate end-to-end control logic,” said WIoT in a press release. “OTIC also will test artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to control open and programmable cellular networks.”

The OTIC will provide testing equipment and services to validate disaggregated base stations and RAN Intelligent Controllers (RICs). This will include custom applications such as xApps and rApps. End-to-end intelligent applications will be tested against different commercial and open-stack implementations in emulated or over-the-air environments.  

The OTIC also will be a resource for the U.S. government. The Open6G Hub, within which the OTIC will operate, has funding from the Department of Defense’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, the Army Research Laboratory Cooperative Agreement and the National Science Foundation’s Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program.

“Northeastern’s Open6G is at the forefront of innovation in Open RAN testing, architectures, algorithms, software, and experimentation. Together with our partners, we are creating an innovation and testing ecosystem that will continue to serve the federal government, industry, and academia,” WIoT Director Tommaso Melodia said in a press release.

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Sixty percent of U.S. consumers responding to a YouGov survey said that a good experience with a brand is influential in their choice of a new cellphone.

Previous experience easily outdistances price (51%) and value for the money (50%) as key factors. That’s not surprising, considering the maturity of the smartphone market.

The survey found that consumers ages 18- to 29-years-old are less likely than middle aged (45 years-old to 64 years-old) and older (65 years-old and older) shoppers to emphasize the top three buying priorities. An example cited by YouGov is that only 53% of the youngest group cited previous experience with a brand an influential factor compared to 70% of the 65 years-old and older cohort.

Other interesting takeaways are that younger consumers are more influenced by recommendations and reviews (31% of the youngest group compared to 28% of the oldest).

The top three decision criteria were way ahead of the others. While there was a 10% gap between the first and third factors, there was a 17% gap between the third and the fourth.

The list of factors:

• Previous good brand experience: 63% overall (highest at 70% in 65+ age group)
• Good deal on price of the phone: 56% (61% in 65+ in age group)
• Value for money: 53% (56% in 45-64 and 65+ age groups)
• Good deal on plan/contract: 36% (43% in 65+ age group)
• Heard/read good things about it: 25% (31% in 18-29 age group)
• Recommended by family/friends: 21% (24% in 18-29 age group)
• Exclusive promotion/offer: 20% (23% in 30-44 age group and women overall)
• Trade in scheme: 14% (18% in 65+ age group)
• Ability to use a live demo of the phone: 8%; (12% in 18-29 age group)
• Saw an advert for the phone/brand: 7% (11% in 18-29 age group)
• In store sales assistant recommended: 6% (8% in 18-29 age group)

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The number of commercial and government buildings with fiber broadband services available to them continues to grow. Twelve companies now have at least 15,000 on-net fiber lit buildings, which qualifies them for inclusion on Vertical Systems Group’s U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings Leaderboard. That’s one more than last year.

The companies, in order by the number of connected buildings, are AT&T, Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise, Lumen, Comcast Business, Cox Business, Zayo, Crown Castle, Frontier, Brightspeed, Breezeline and Optimum. AT&T held the top spot for the seventh consecutive year.

VSG Fiber Lit Buildings Leaderboard

VSG’s Challenge Tier includes companies with between 5,000 and 14,999 lit commercial buildings. In alphabetical order, companies in the Challenge Tier include Altafiber (formerly Cincinnati Bell), Consolidated Communications, FirstLight, Great Plains Communications, Ritter Communications, Segra, Unite Private Networks, Uniti Fiber and Windstream. 

Companies in the Market Player Group have fewer than 5,000 commercial fiber lit buildings in the U.S. VSG has identified more than 200 metro, regional and other providers that fit that description. Some of the qualifiers, in alphabetical order, are 11:11 Systems, ACD, Alaska Communications, American Telesis, Armstrong Business Solutions, Astound Business, C Spire, Centracom, Cogent, Conterra, DFN, DQE Communications, Everstream, ExteNet Systems, Fatbeam, FiberLight, First Digital, Flo Networks, Fusion Connect, Google Fiber, GTT, Horizon, Hunter Communications, Logix Fiber Networks, LS Networks, Mediacom Business, MetroNet Business, Midco, Pilot Fiber, PS Lightwave, Shentel Business, Silver Star Telecom, Sonic Business, Sparklight Business, Syringa, T-Mobile, TDS Telecom, TPx, U.S. Signal, Vast Networks, WOW!Business and Ziply Fiber.

VSG also offered highlights:

• Rankings for the top six companies on the 2022 Leaderboard are unchanged from 2021.
• The next six provider rankings changed compared to 2021. Zayo advanced to rank seventh ahead of Crown Castle. Frontier moved up to ninth position from tenth. Brightspeed debuted in tenth position with fiber assets acquired from Lumen. Breezeline (formerly Atlantic Broadband) fell to eleventh position from ninth. Optimum (branded as Altice USA) dropped from eleventh to twelfth.
• The number of 2022 Challenge Tier citations expanded from eight to nine with the addition of Ritter Communications.

“Fiber installations at U.S. commercial sites increased in 2022, driven by escalating requirements for gigabit-speed connectivity to support cloud-based services, data centers, 5G rollouts, and other applications,” VSG principal Rosemary Cochran said in a press release.

“New fiber investments in the U.S. will continue to be impacted by pending federal programs and funding initiatives. Opportunities in the commercial segment include monetizing the millions of small buildings underserved.”

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Palmetto Rural Telephone Cooperative (PRTC), a locally owned telecom service provider based in the South Carolina Lowcountry since 1951, is now using the Communications Data Group (CDG) MBS Cloud platform for billing and operations.

MBS Cloud is a modular web-based business and operations support system (B/OSS) that operates on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.

“We are very excited to be launching PRTC into the AWS environment,” Tony Stout, Chief Technology Officer of CDG and PRTC said in a press release. “We are eager for PRTC to experience the advantages of AWS and thrilled to reach the next step in CDG’s mission to provide our BSS/OSS clients immediate scalability and enhanced services and security within a transformative cloud ecosystem.”

CDG is owned by rural telecom provider, PRTC; hence, Stout’s dual title.

CDG began migrating to AWS late last year using a phrased approach to identify where AWS could enable scalability and rapid innovation using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, AWS Transit Gateway, Amazon Aurora Serverless and Amazon Simple Storage Service. 

CDG says that the onboarding of PRTC for its operations support systems and business support systems (OSS/BSS) “represents a significant milestone” in the migration onto the AWS cloud.

CDG has provided billing and operational support services for more than 50 years.