Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the publication of the report from the Telecoms Diversification Task Force on 20 April, what plans they have (1) to incentivise, and (2) to encourage, UK Mobile Network Operators to invest in Open Radio Access Networks.

The Government continues to work with mobile operators and suppliers to build an open, flexible, and diverse telecoms supply market, following the recommendations of the Diversification Taskforce, published on 20 April. The Taskforce recommendations are helping to guide our approach to delivering the Diversification strategy, including its core pillar of accelerating the development and deployment of interoperable solutions, such as Open RAN, into the UK’s 5G network.

Our engagement with both operators and suppliers continues to be constructive and we are delighted with moves made by industry so far that support our aims. The announcement of numerous Open RAN R&D facilities in the UK is a positive sign that our direction of travel is the right one, and we are working at pace to develop targeted actions to ensure that interoperable technologies are ready to deploy in more resilient network infrastructure. The Government is designing a programme of targeted R&D support, building on existing Open RAN trials, such as the SmartRAN Open Networks Interoperability Centre (SONIC), to level the playing field for smaller suppliers, and we continue to consider all options. This will need to support performance demonstration, such as with large-scale urban trials, as well as product development and testing.