Leading companies in the telecommunications industry have joined forces through the newly formed, Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI). The official signing ceremony took place this month, attended by LG Electronics Inc; NEC Networks; Nokia and Samsung Electronics. The Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI) signals the commitment of these companies to create an open, competitive, mobile network element module industry. The founding companies welcome and invite all other infrastructure and subsystem suppliers to join OBSAI for the benefit of the wireless industry.
Open Base Station Architecture will lead to modular radio base stations featuring open internal interfaces. This will allow manufacturers to focus their research and development efforts on their core competencies and to buy selected radio base station modules from each other and from other module vendors.
The real beneficiaries of this Initiative are the end-users of the forthcoming Mobile Internet services. The initiative will allow faster development of innovative and more cost-effective radio base stations, enabling earlier and lower-cost introduction of new technologies and services by the operators.
"Open Base Station Architecture will revolutionize radio base station development," says Jukka Klemettilä, Chairperson of the Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI) "It will allow next-generation radio base stations to be built using best-of-breed, shared platforms and modules, available on an open market, whilst letting network suppliers differentiate on system and network-element levels. “
Expected to contribute to bringing the network costs per capacity down, this initiative is a pivotal element in enabling large-scale Mobile Internet service usage at affordable prices.
Continues Mr. Klemettilä,”It is encouraging to see that OBSAI is already producing results, with the agreement of the high level, logical architecture required for standardization. We expect detailed specifications to be available by the end of this year. OBSAI is by no means a ”closed shop” initiative, we welcome other companies with a similar mindset to drive our industry forward to the next stage.”
The Open Base Station Architecture initiative will complement current activities in existing standardization organizations (for example, 3GPP). Radio base stations developed using Open Base Station Architecture will be fully compatible with standard radio interfaces, such as WCDMA, GSM/EDGE and CDMA. The initiative will focus on the base station architecture and internal interfaces.
Base station, module and component supplier companies interested in joining and participating in the work of OBSAI can find further information from: www.obsai.org
For further information and to contact the OBSAI chairperson:
LG Electronics: Mr Jaeho Yoo +82 2 2005 2451
Nokia Press Office +358 7180 38195
Samsung: Helena Lee, +82 16 490 2728
About the Open Base Station Architecture Initiative:
The Open Base Station Architecture Initiative was formed in September 2002. It comprises leading telecommunication companies: LG Electronics Inc; NEC Networks; Nokia and Samsung Electronics. OBSAI aims to establish open standards for future Base Station development www.obsai.org