Parallel Wireless wins role in UK’s 5G rollout

This will allow the company to expand its UK-based team and develop new technologies that facilitate the rapid adoption of 5G.

The ONE competition is part of the government’s Open Networks R&D Fund, which delivers on the £250 million 5G Telecoms Supply Chain Diversification Strategy through a range of telecoms R&D projects.

The competition aims to tackle barriers to the adoption of mobile networks in the three key challenge areas of High Demand Density use cases, RAN Intelligent Controller, and Processors, RF, and other RAN hardware.

Project AURA brings together a consortium including Parallel Wireless (lead), Kandou Bus, and British Telecom to design a tightly integrated radio solution with an emphasis on flexibility to target different frequency bands and form factors, greater power efficiency, and with the goal to manufacture the product in the UK at a competitive cost.

”DSIT's commitment to accelerate telecoms innovation with the ONE Competition has inspired important new ideas from our world-class research team in the UK,” said Steve Papa (pictured), co-founder and CEO at Parallel Wireless. “Our project AURA will enable scalable manufacturing of telecoms equipment in the UK, drive down costs for mobile operators to enable more OpenRAN 5G deployments, and reduce the significant Scope 1, 2, and 3 carbon emissions from operating wireless networks. We look forward to realizing these important innovations with DSIT's assistance.”

Nicolas Scheidecker, Head of UK R&D, said, ”We are delighted that DSIT selected our project AURA as a winner of the ONE competition. The competition funding will help us and our partners grow our multidisciplinary UK teams to bring to market a significantly differentiated and highly innovative radio. Our vision is that this product will improve the energy efficiency of our customer’s networks whilst supporting the industrial strategy of the UK.”