Japan is on the verge of setting up an experimental wide area network to test 5G Open RAN equipment and ensure complete interoperability among a group of select vendors, in a bid to forge a coherent ecosystem. This follows successful interoperability testing for radio units (RUs) from different vendors over a 5G Standalone (SA) network conforming to Open RAN interface specifications. This interoperability test used a software upgrade to introduce SA capability to NEC’s 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) baseband (centralized unit and distributed units or CU/DU) operating on the commercial network of Japan’s largest MNO, NTT Docomo. The objective now is to build on this effort by setting up a full-scale experimental network, probably at Yokosuka Research Park near Tokyo, in…