In late January, a UK-based silicon developer announced that it was making a full 5G Open RAN starter kit available. Although this was on the face of it a new product launch from a new company, called RANsemi, the product and the company were already known entities.
That’s because RANsemi was formed in the main by a team that split off from O-RAN semiconductor and software developer Picocom. Picocom developed chip platforms and software enabling manufacturers to build integrated and disaggregated, O-RAN small cells, RUs and DU-CUs. One constituent part of Picocom was Picocom Technology Ltd, which was largely based in the UK, and carried out the bulk of the silicon development. The main part of the software development, and the ownership of the company, however, were based in China.
In late 2023, the leadership behind the UK branch of the company took steps to separate themselves off from their Chinese owners, and create a new company. It took over a year for the final papers to be signed and finalised, but RANsemi now sits as a UK-owned company, separate from Picocom.
“We set it up because we realised that being a Chinese-owned company, selling in the rest of the world was becoming more limiting,” says Peter Claydon, CEO of RANsemi and formerly President of Picocom Technologies.
The new structure sees the erstwhile Picocom sell internally in China. RANsemi has licensed technology from Picocom that it gives it the rights to sell in the rest of the world.
The license agreement also gives RANsemi the rights to sell what were Picocom branded parts as RANsemi parts. So the Picocom PC802 and PC805 become RNS802, a 5G/4G PHY SoC, and RNS805, an SoC optimised for a Cat A O-RU.
That means that although RANsemi is a new name, it is led by an experienced team, and comes to market with mature, existing product technology.
The main aim is to give its non-Chinese customers, and their customers, confidence that they can buy from a company that will not face blocks or sanctions on account of its Chinese ownership.
“We’ve done this in conjunction with customers,” Claydon explains. “Some were happy buying from a Chinese company, but some were becoming uncomfortable, and there are others who wanted to use our products but hadn’t yet done so because of the Chinese ownership.”
Ownership aside, as the licence shows, the IP is still Chinese-owned in origin. Will that be a constraint?
Claydon is sure it won’t. “The silicon doesn’t change. And from a software point of view, well Intel FlexRAN was largely written in China, and nobody complains about that.”
The RANsemi 5G Starter Kit, showing partner ecosystem
In any case, post transition and as the team builds up, the plan is to “fork” the software, following a BSI audit of the existing software and development processes that has already been completed.
Claydon says that the company will push ahead with those customers who can now engage in more confidence – including several who are based in Taiwan or, in the case of SOLiD Technologies and Contela, in South Korea.
“It [independence] is allowing us to define our own product roadmap. In the short term there’s lots of new stuff to do from a software point of view. There’s always new features. We’re seeing things in Split 7.2, and multi-user RUs – so you can have one RU connected to multiple DUs.”
Other areas for growth could also include Non Terrestrial Networks, where Claydon thinks RANsemi silicon is applicable, as well as FR2 (higher band frequencies) – “if it ever happens”.
Claydon said that the company is also active in developing M-Plane software, especially to enable the joint management of a shared RU by different operators who retain their own DU-CU.
“We’ve seen a few neutral host organisations interested in this approach as a sort of DAS alternative, forming something that is a lot cleaner from a technology point of view.”
There’s also an increasing requirement for 5G small cells, as the chip platforms in LTE small cells are reach end-of-life.
And there’s still headroom to replace FPGA platforms in products with the much more power efficient SoC solution.
All the customers outside of China came across to RANSemi and were happy to do that.
Claydon recalled encountering a company at India Mobile Congress in October that had designed an indoor, 4t4r 100 MHz RU, that had an RF transceiver and an FPGA resulting in large fins on the back of the RU to dissipate heat.
“Replacing their FPGA with our RNS805 will reduce power consumption and costs as well. It’s an interesting opportunity where people need something low power and small.”
With enhanced O-RAN fronthaul specifications suporting adoption by operators such as AT&T, Open RAN too is becoming an accepted and much more standardised deployment model, in Claydon’s view. That’s generating more confidence in the disaggregated model. And it’s being further helped by much shorter integration times, with the company finding that it can integrate a new RU to a DU-CU in just a day or two.
Claydon also points to a large private network deployment in Japan, trials in South Korea and the advances that partner company Antevia is making in the UK.
The path of Open RAN has not been smooth, and the role of Chinese companies within the ecosystem has been of particular note. When the O-RAN Alliance formed it was originally a merger between two disaggregated RAN efforts, one of which was largely Chinese-led, and included Chinese operator and vendor participation. But as political pressures meant the risks inherent in buying Chinese-owned technology have solidified, the supply chain has had to shift in adjustment, and O-RAN has come to be defined almost as a weapon against Chinese dominance, underpinning efforts to create national telecom infrastructure champions.
RANsemi, as a UK-owned company, now thinks it has a template to go forward and develop within that landscape.
“We are actively looking for funding at the moment,” says Claydon. “We’re different because we’re a new company with mature products. All the customers outside of China came across to RANSemi and were happy to do that. They’ve been eagerly anticipating it because we have quite a lot of customers in Taiwan and Korea that tend to sell into the US as well, and they’re a lot happier now.”
