Juniper Networks has announced what it called an "exclusive" IP global licensing agreement with research outfit Netsia, a fully owned Silicon Valley subsidiary of Argela, which, in turn, forms part of Türk Telekom Group.

As part of the arrangement – the financial terms were not disclosed – Netsia will transfer its radio intelligent controller (RIC) technology to Juniper, including related source code and patents. Juniper also gets exclusive rights to develop and sell products and solutions that it integrates with the newly acquired RIC technology.

Included in the deal is also the permanent transfer of technical domain experts from Netsia to Juniper in support of RIC's integration into Juniper's product portfolio. Juniper framed the relationship with the Türk Telekom affiliate as "further strengthening its open RAN and 5G expertise."

RIC is an important operational open RAN component, playing a role in "end-to-end" network slicing, as well as enabling "tuning" of various radio access resources to reliably deliver against granular SLAs (service level agreements) for specific use cases. It can also support efforts by third-party developers to create new network applications, such as performance enhancements.

Still some work to do

Another aspect of the Netsia tie-up is that Türk Telekom has committed to purchase Juniper products and solutions to support its open RAN and 5G rollout. This assumes, however, an initial proof-of-concept project – expected in late 2021 – which incorporates RIC tech and Juniper's "broader portfolio."

Netsia says its 4G and 5G RIC is in the "advanced stage of development" following approximately five years of R&D. Numerous proof-of-concept trials have been apparently "already successfully completed or underway with major service providers around the world."

The research firm, as far as Light Reading can make out, has still to debut its RIC tech commercially.

— Ken Wieland, contributing editor, special to Light Reading