Some major vendors have come together to form a new industry cooperation known as the Common Public Radio Interface to allow members to make base station subsystems that can work with each other.
The vendors involved include L.M. Ericsson, Huawei Technologies Inc., NEC Corp., Nortel Networks Ltd. and Siemens AG.
“The CPRI industry cooperation enables base station manufacturers to focus their research and development efforts on their core competencies and to buy selected radio base station subsystems,” said the companies.
Some major base station vendors, including Nokia Corp., Motorola Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc., are missing from the initiative.
The cooperation is not a proprietary move, according to Mats Thoren, press manager for Ericsson. “This is open, and other vendors are welcome to join,” remarked Thoren.
The companies believe that the initiative will allow vendors to introduce new technologies more quickly and offer a wider portfolio of products to operators with shorter time to market.
“The operators will benefit from a broader choice of products and more flexible solutions, improving the efficiency of network deployment,” said the founders.
Thoren said the effort makes it simpler for vendors to have a broader market and access a range of suppliers for base station subsystems.
“Anyone who uses it can more easily interact and source components from one another,” he said.
He explained that the initiative does not preclude competition among the members because each company will focus on its areas of competence with a view to differentiating itself within the market.
The founders said the interface, which will be used for radio base station products in mobile systems, complements existing standards in the industry.
