Melbourne, October 17, 2022 - NEC Australia, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation and a leading Australian ICT solutions and services firm, has been selected by the NSW Telco Authority to build the initial phase of a state-of-the-art 5G innovation lab as part of a new strategic partnership.

The new 5G innovation lab will provide an environment where NSW Telco Authority and public safety agencies can explore new technologies, prove interoperability, and push the boundaries of mobile technology in the context of Public Safety Mobile Broadband (PSMB) applications. The lab will run on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide an immersive 5G test bed experience in the cloud, enabling simple and fast application building, rapid deployment, enable scalability, resilience and lifecycle automation.

“NEC is honoured to be a strategic partner to NSW Telco Authority to help build practical and effective PSMB use cases and prove the value of a cloud native 5G core network combined with Open Radio Access Network (Open-RAN). The potential of these technologies are infinite. As we move towards a more 5G-centric era, we look forward to leveraging this partnership to address Australia’s digital divide and help drive cutting-edge 5G innovation,” said Krisztian Som, Head of 5G Sales, Asia Pacific at NEC.

“This first phase of the 5G Innovation lab helps the NSW Telco Authority to test the latest cloud native core technology alongside Open RAN, explore cloud deployment options (to align with the NSW government ‘s ‘public cloud first’ policy), build PSMB use cases and provide emergency service organisations (ESOs) with the mobile broadband capacity to facilitate easier communication and better situational awareness” said Mr Som.

NEC Australia will deliver a turnkey end-to-end solution to design, supply, install and commission NEC’s award-winning cloud native, fully containerised, 5G core on public cloud, in conjunction with a local distributed User Plane Function (UPF).

NEC will provide 5G Open RAN virtualised centralised and distributed (CU/DU) units, Open Radio Units (O-RUs) and CPE’s (Customer Premises Equipment) to leverage applications for the NSW Telco Authority.

NEC has a proven track record of providing innovative, highly reliable carrier grade solutions for telcos and mission-critical service providers in Australia and globally. NEC Australia has been a long-term strategic partner to the NSW Telco Authority providing wireless backhaul solution for the NSW Public Safety Network (PSN) program via the ITS2573 NSW Government procurement panel.