NEC Corporation announced the development of Radio Units (RU) for 5G base stations that comply with O-RAN fronthaul specifications established by the O-RAN Alliance.

In the future, 5G is expected to require a large number of small-coverage base station devices. NEC's RU is supposedly ideal for 5G conditions as they are compact, lightweight and consume a low level of power, which reduces installation and operation costs.

The amount of 5G network traffic is rapidly increasing, which requires efficient configuration and operation of mobile networks and network devices.

The O-RAN Alliance, in which major global telecommunications carriers and vendors of telecommunications equipment participate, designs and promote open interfaces that enable multi-vendor interconnections, aiming to quickly build highly scalable and intelligent networks by combining equipment from several vendors.

NEC SVP Nozomu Watanabe says, "NEC aims to drive the global expansion of 5G by contributing to ecosystems in radio access networks via interoperability testing between multiple vendors' equipment that is compliant with O-RAN fronthaul specifications.

NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world.

The NEC Group supposedly aims to provide "solutions for society" that promote the safety, security efficiency and fairness of society.

Under the company's corporate message of "Orchestrating a brighter world," NEC aims to help solve a wide range of issues.

NEC will display RUs compliant with the O-RAN fronthaul specifications at Mobile World Congress 2019.

NEC will also showcase its digital ID management solution. NEC Digital KYC solution can supposedly enable service providers to offer swift access to the customers to use services through a 1-step digital KYC.

This supposedly improves:

• Lead time required to register and authenticate a genuine user.
• Customer satisfaction by providing registration/KYC/activation services at any place, any time and thereafter utilising same biometrics to access those services.
• Personal data security by limited sharing of customer personal data.

This aims to be a one-stop solution for customer onboarding and authentication by utilising NEC's biometric technologies.