Turkish GSM giant inks 5G tech deal with US firm

Turkish telecommunications giant Turk Telekom and US conglomerate Juniper Networks inked a deal Wednesday on further developing and deploying 5G technology.

The patented Radio Intelligent Controller (RIC) technology from Netsia, a subsidiary of the Turk Telekom Group company Argela in the US, will be integrated into Juniper’s product portfolio, according to a statement.

The cooperation will strengthen the 5G and related Open RAN (Open Radio Access Network) ecosystem by spreading open and smart 5G radio infrastructure to all operators, especially Turk Telekom.

Turk Telekom aims to deploy Juniper's products and solutions into its ecosystem as of the end of 2021 to support all new-generation Open RAN and 5G deployments.

To accelerate the integration of RIC technology into Juniper's product portfolio, expert technical staff from Netsia will also be permanently transferring to the Juniper team.

"With our comprehensive cooperation, we have taken another concrete step demonstrating our determination to export technology to the world," Turk Telekom's CEO Umit Onal said at the signing ceremony.

Underlining that the companies have been working for a long time on the cutting edge RIC technologies that will play an active role in setting global 5G standards, Onal explained that software developed by Netsia would provide high-capacity, scalable, flexible, personalized network and service solutions for the mobile communication.

With its critical function that makes Open RAN technology operational, RIC enables

RIC is a crucial component of Open RAN technology, enabling the intelligent management of sliced mobile networks -- a feature of 5G that divides single connections into separate virtual connections that flexibly provide different amounts of resources to users.

"We have achieved a strong synergy with the combination of Netsia's know-how and productization capacity with Juniper's customer network and geographic reach."

"Juniper and Netsia are already looking for ways to extend this collaboration to SDN-enabled broadband field," said Onal.

Also commenting on the deal, Rami Rahim, the CEO of Juniper Networks, said that assuring the right service experience is key to the next decade of 5G applications.

"Our dynamic collaboration with Turk Telekom and Netsia is founded on shared principles of an open approach to technology development, the fundamental importance of disaggregation and programmability and the drive toward a cloud-native infrastructure from the telco cloud into the services edge and radio networks."