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NTIA Blog

One Giant Leap for Mobility: Recapping the 2023 5G Challenge

October 3, 2023

At the National Telecommunications and Information Administration we are working to foster the development of an open 5G wireless ecosystem to help the private sector bring new life and innovation to a marketplace held back by few vendors and little competition.  

One way we’re doing this is through our 5G lab at the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences, where we partnered with the Department of Defense for our 2023 5G Challenge. The 2023 5G Challenge tested whether an open 5G ecosystem can work in real world scenarios.

Challenge Structure Recap 

These results are now available in the 2023 5G Challenge Closing Ceremony video

The 2023 5G Challenge tested whether components of an Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN), such as antennas and radio base stations, can work together to ultimately create a multi-vendor subsystem end-to-end (E2E) 5G network. 

Topics

The Road to IGF2023

October 2, 2023
The upcoming Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Kyoto, Japan will unfold amidst two major Internet governance milestone events. It will come on the heels of a preparatory ministerial meeting for next year’s Summit of the Future, where the Global Digital Compact is envisioned to be agreed to, and in advance of the 20-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20). 

Connecting neighbors to high-speed Internet service in rural Texas

September 25, 2023
In August, I had the pleasure of visiting Totelcom’s offices and training facilities in De Leon, Texas. Totelcom is a family-owned, rural telecom provider that serves De Leon—with a population of just over 2,000—and the surrounding communities. As we pulled up after the two-hour drive from Dallas, the company’s digital reader board displayed a temperature of 112 degrees.  

IPAs On Tap: NTIA’s Role in Cybersecurity Policy

August 23, 2023
For NTIA, one of the primary focuses for cybersecurity work is maintaining the openness of the Internet and its potential for innovation and further technological development. Those priorities can apply to cybersecurity policy efforts in a variety of different ways.
Topics

NTIA Promotes 5G Supplier Diversity At Home and Abroad

June 30, 2023

By Kate Dimsdale, NTIA Telecommunications Policy Specialist

At NTIA, we believe that open and interoperable networks are the future of wireless technologies, including 5G and its successors. Such networks will increase the reliability of our telecom supply chain, drive competition and provide our allies with additional choices for trustworthy equipment.

Right now, the wireless network equipment market is highly consolidated, with just a few companies supplying the equipment necessary to support a network. But Open Radio Access Networks, or Open RAN, would unlock that system to allow different companies to compete to supply equipment for different parts of the network. Those different components will be compatible and interoperable with each other. Think of it as similar to the different options for tires that car makers have, or how home Internet users can buy different and competing routers for their WiFi service.

The U.S. Government believes in the promise of these networks. NTIA is administering a $1.5 billion Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund to promote the development and deployment of open and interoperable equipment in America.

But the wireless equipment ecosystem is global, and we want our allies and partner countries to benefit from this coming shift.

NTIA Receives More Than 250 Comments to Inform Digital Equity Act Programs

June 12, 2023

NTIA Blog 
June 12, 2023 

News Media Contact:
NTIA, Office of Public Affairs, press@ntia.gov 

By: Angela Thi Bennett

Affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet service has become essential for individuals and communities in an increasingly digital world. To further the development of the upcoming phases of the Digital Equity Act, we issued a Request for Comment on March 2, 2023.  The comment window closed on May 1, 2023, and a wide range of stakeholders from across the country submitted 252 written submissions. NTIA also hosted four public listening sessions reaching more than 400 stakeholders to obtain responses from those who were unable to provide written comments.

The comments and listening sessions will help inform the design and implementation of the $1.44 billion State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program and the $1.25 billion Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program. All written comments received are available on regulations.gov.

2023 5G Challenge Update: All Nine Contestant Subsystems Pass Stage Two Wrap-around Emulation Testing

June 5, 2023

One of the main priorities at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is to accelerate the adoption of an open 5G ecosystem through open interfaces, interoperable subsystems, secure networks, and modular multi-vendor solutions.

A main component of this work is to research and test whether an open 5G ecosystem can work in real-world scenarios. This is where the 2023 5G Challenge comes into play. The 5G Challenge is a research competition and collaboration between the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) in Boulder, Colorado.

The 2023 5G Challenge is offering a $7 million prize pool for participants who successfully integrate their radio access network (RAN) subsystems with multiple other RAN participant subsystems and outperform their peers.

The 2023 5G Challenge consists of multiple stages during which contestants are evaluated and prizes are awarded. During all phases of the competition the host lab ensures that contestant subsystems adhere to 3GPP standards and O-RAN ALLIANCE specifications and identify issues that would hinder multi-vendor integration.

Teams have progressed in testing since starting the challenge in late March. After the first nine weeks of host lab testing, the initial nine contestants have passed Stage Two wrap-around emulation testing.

Stage Two Testing