Mobile communications company Ligado Networks and Nokia have agreed to use Nokia’s Digital Automation Cloud enterprise private wireless networks solution with Ligado’s Band 24 (1600 MHz) nationwide licensed spectrum for deployment in the U.S. market. Nokia’s DAC is an application platform providing edge computing capabilities in addition to the private wireless connectivity that makes use of both unlicensed and licensed spectrum.
Ligado and Nokia expect to commence market engagement with enterprise customers in early 2022. Commercial availability of the FDD spectrum platform is expected by the end of this year. “We also anticipate developing additional capabilities with the TDD 1670-1675 MHz band,” said Maqbool Aliani, Ligado Chief Technology Officer.
In April 2020, Inside Towers reported the FCC authorized Ligado to deploy a low-power terrestrial nationwide network on 35 megahertz of spectrum bands that will primarily support Internet of Things services in the 1526-1536 MHz, 1627.5-1637.5 MHz, and 1646.5-1656.5 MHz bands, known as Band 24.
Since gaining FCC approval, Ligado has been creating an 3GPP ecosystem for the band. Most recently, in June 2021, Nokia agreed to develop 5G base station radios compatible with Ligado’s L-band spectrum. Also in June, Mavenir announced that it will develop Open RAN compliant remote radio units and cloud-native O-RAN software that is compatible with Ligado’s L-band spectrum.
Before that, in February 2021, Rakuten Mobile, Inc. and Ligado agreed to collaborate on a private network solution using the Rakuten Communications Platform with ecosystem partners and vendors. Ligado, Nokia, Mavenir, and Rakuten are members of the Open RAN Policy Coalition.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Coalition
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