Biden-Harris Administration Awards $42 Million For Wireless Innovation

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) awarded $42 million in the final award from the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund’s first Notice of Funding Opportunity. Additional awards will come after NTIA issues the next Notice of Funding Opportunity. This award will fund the Acceleration of Compatibility and Commercialization for Open RAN Deployments (ACCoRD)—a project by a consortium of US carriers, foreign carriers, universities and equipment suppliers to establish a testing, evaluation and research and development center in the Dallas Technology Corridor and a satellite facility in the Washington, DC area. The center will focus testing on network performance, interoperability, security, and facilitate research into new testing methods. Testing and evaluation facilities will make industry-standard testing more accessible to new market players—both in the US and in partner nations—and encourage greater collaboration across different industries.