The NSW Telco Authority has contracted NEC to build a cloud-backed 5G lab to help it assess the application of the technology for public safety mobile broadband (PSMB) applications.
The lab will run on AWS “to provide an immersive 5G testbed experience in the cloud, enabling simple and fast application building, rapid deployment, scalability, resilience and lifecycle automation," NEC said in a statement.
The environment will let both the NSW Telco Authority and NSW public safety agencies explore new technologies and prove interoperability.
The lab will include NEC’s centralised and distributed virtualised 5G Open RAN unit, open radio units, and customer premises equipment, to demonstrate applications to the NSW Telco Authority.
It will be an end-to-end, turnkey solution covering design, supply, installation and commissioning.
Naohisa Matsuda, general manager of NEC’s 5G strategy and business, said the company will “help build practical and effective PSMB use cases and prove the value of a cloud native 5G core network combined with an open radio access network (RAN)”.
The first deliverable will let the Authority “test the latest cloud native core technology alongside open RAN, explore cloud deployment options (to align with the NSW government's 'public cloud first' policy), build PSMB use cases, and provide emergency service organizations (ESOs) with the mobile broadband capacity to facilitate easier communication and better situational awareness," Matsuda said.
Further yet-to-be detailed phases of the build are planned.
NEC has long standing as a supplier to the Authority. It provides wireless backhaul services for the public safety newtork under the ITS2573 NSW procurement panel.
In April, the company was one of several named to help the Authority assess different models for mobile tower sharing.
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