Nokia has reportedly bought the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) and service management and orchestration (SMO) business from Juniper Networks, owned by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), as the Finnish telecoms vendor looks to bolster its position in artificial intelligence (AI) driven mobile networks.
Juniper’s RIC and SMO team will move into the network management group within Nokia’s Mobile Networks division, with a specific remit to advance Nokia’s global lead in AI-driven RAN automation, autonomous networking, and intelligent applications.
Over the past five years, Juniper has built a “best-in-class” RIC platform, alongside an SMO solution enabling on-demand, end-to-end dynamic network slicing.
Further, RIC allows telcos to mix third-party network applications—such as switching off base stations or diverting traffic from congested cells—with radios from Ericsson or Nokia. It comes in two forms: rApps for the non-real-time RIC, and xApps for the near-real-time version.
