Bengaluru: Leading information technology companies Wipro Limited and HFCL Limited will jointly engineer a variety of 5G transport products, it was announced today.
The two companies announced a partnership deal to co-develop equipment that include Cell Site Router, DU (Distributed Unit) Aggregation Router, and CU (Centralized Unit) Aggregation Router.
The offering aims to empower enterprises to realize their 5G-enabled vision and increase the speed with which they can bring high-quality 5G solutions to market, said a statement issued here.
Wipro will leverage Tarang Labs, its product compliance and certification labs in Bangalore, for hardware integration, validation and pre-certification, it said.
HFCL is currently investing in a portfolio of 5G products for the Radio Access Network (RAN) and Transport.
The transport network of Communication Service Providers (CSPs) needs modernization due to much higher bandwidth per 5G cell site, densification of cell sites in 5G, Ethernet and IP based transport, and new services with stringent latency requirements like Drones, Autonomous Vehicle and Robotics-based precision manufacturing.
HFCL is developing 5G transport products for the fronthaul, midhaul and backhaul to help CSPs transform their transport network.
“We will leverage our strong experience in network equipment engineering, expertise in 5G/LTE and VLSI (Very-Large-Scale Integration) system design, engineering design services and embedded software. We are confident that this collaboration will ensure an accelerated go-to-market for HFCL,” said Satya Easwaran, Country Head, India, Wipro Limited.
Mahendra Nahata, Managing Director of HFCL, said Wipro is a key partner for HFCL because of its world-class engineering and in-depth experience on hardware design, embedded software and its in-house certification and compliance labs (Tarang).
“HFCL’s comprehensive portfolio of 5G transport products (which are under development), that include Cell Site Router, DU Aggregation Router and CU Aggregation Router, will enable CSPs to modernize their backhaul networks and make them ready for 5G services,” he said.
“These 5G transport products, based on open standards, will help operators realize the benefits of network disaggregation, and are in the true spirit of ‘Make in India’ for the world,” he added.
HFCL’s 5G Transport products are based on merchant silicon, network dis-aggregated architecture, and on open standards like TIP (Telecom Infra Project), and OCP (Open Compute Project). Wipro has developed multiple cell site routers for CSPs globally, and is also active in the TIP community.
