CableLabs Opens New TIP Lab

LOUISVILLE, Colo. -- Today we are excited to announce a new venue for wireless network innovation and collaboration at CableLabs. CableLabs and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) have opened a TIP Community Lab located at CableLabs’ headquarters in Louisville, Colorado.

What is a TIP Community Lab?
The TIP Community Lab is an integral component of community-based innovation with data-driven results. The goal of a Community Lab is to enable at-scale real-world projects that lead to adoption. These labs provide an open and collaborative working environment for members of TIP project groups to meet, test and refine the solutions they’re developing.

Currently, Community Labs are located at the offices of Facebook and SK Telecom. Today, beyond the CableLabs announcement, Deutsche Telekom announced the opening of its Community Lab in Berlin and Bharti Airtel announced that it is launching a Community Lab based in India.

What goes on at the CableLabs Community Lab?
At CableLabs, we set aside dedicated lab space for the TIP Community Lab. When at the CableLabs TIP Community Lab, engineers will have access to a bevy of state-of-the-art wired and wireless test equipment, including our:

The first project to enter the CableLabs TIP Community Lab is the vRAN Fronthaul project. This project is focused on virtualization of the radio access network (RAN) for non-ideal fronthaul links (i.e. not CPRI). A key component of 5G wireless networks is going to be densification; deploying more, smaller cell sites closer to the users. Think of a small cell site inside your favorite coffee shop, or several small cells peppered throughout the hottest restaurant and bar streets in your city.

The economics of this deployment style don't support pulling fiber links to every small cell, it’s just too expensive. Therefore, a fronthaul technology capable of using “non-ideal” links to connect these small cells (i.e. DOCSIS®, G.Fast, Ethernet, Microwave), can enable new deployment economics.

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