NEC explained that the Project NAVIGATE aims to design, deploy, test and validate a blueprint for deploying open and sharable, public mobile 4G and 5G capacity in High Density Deployment (HDD) environments.

NEC and Freshwave have been selected for Project NAVIGATE in the U.K. government’s Open Networks Ecosystem (ONE) competition, the former said in a release.

The ONE competition is part of the government’s £250 million ($265 million) 5G Telecoms Supply Chain Diversification Strategy for fostering R&D projects for telecoms, including the Future RAN Competition (FRANC), Future Open Networks Research Challenge, and entities such as the SmartRAN Open Network Interoperability Centre (SONIC) Labs, the UK Telecoms Innovation Network and the UK Telecoms Lab.

NEC explained that the Project NAVIGATE aims to design, deploy, test and validate a blueprint for deploying open and sharable, public mobile 4G and 5G capacity in High Density Deployment (HDD) environments. The project intends to demonstrate deployment at scale using Open RAN. The total project budget for NAVIGATE is £7.42 million. The U.K. government will contribute £3.32 million and the remainder will be invested by NEC and Freshwave.

Under Project NAVIGATE, NEC and Freshwave will collaborate to provide a dense urban area in London with a small cell solution based on NEC’s Open vRAN software. The project aims to showcase that the Open RAN solution is technically and operationally viable, demonstrating that it is more cost-effective and energy-efficient compared to legacy single RAN networks. NAVIGATE supports the multi-operator neutral host network to facilitate the deployment of Open RAN, enabling all UK mobile operators’ networks to connect to it, NEC said.

Hideyuki Ogata, general manager, 5G Solution Department at NEC, said: “NEC aims to deploy a reference architecture based on its Open vRAN software that will support the diversification of the telecom supply chain, while accelerating market developments to provide a cost-effective and energy-efficient solution based on open standards.

“Drawing on NHOD (Neutral Host Outdoor) specifications, our solution will enable mobile network operators to offer new wireless services and improve coverage and capacity, without having to deploy and manage separate infrastructure,” Ogata added.

Tom Bennett, CTO at Freshwave, said: “We’re excited to have been successful in the Open Networks Ecosystem Competition and looking forward to collaborating with the other members of the consortium. As a leading neutral host provider, advancing shareable infrastructure through telecoms ecosystem collaboration is in our DNA, and part of our day-to-day delivery for customers. The more shareable the digital infrastructure, the more reduced the costs – leading to wider use cases, quicker and subsequently more community and economic benefits. And our experience has shown that this all becomes even more true when we stay true to our fundamental design principle that the operators retain full architectural and operational control.”

The U.K. Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), working with British telcos Vodafone, EE, Virgin Media O2 and Three, set a goal to boost Open RAN deployments so that 35% of the U.K.’s mobile network traffic is carried over Open RAN by 2030.