EchoStar Launches Open RAN Center for Integration and Deployment (ORCID)

EchoStar Corporation announced the launch of the Open RAN Center for Integration and Deployment (ORCID), a state-of-the-art Open RAN (O-RAN) testing and evaluation lab housed at EchoStar’s Cheyenne, Wyoming, data center.

The facility, which is supported by a $50 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund (Innovation Fund), offers vendors the opportunity to test and validate O-RAN solutions using EchoStar’s live commercial-grade cloud-native Open RAN network.

EchoStar manages the ORCID consortium, which includes Fujitsu, Mavenir, VMware by Broadcom, and a variety of other technology partners. EchoStar, with the help of its consortium partners, validated O-RAN technology at scale across the country, building an O-RAN 5G network that provides connectivity to more than 240 million Americans nationwide.