NEC announced the acquisition of Aspire Technology Unlimited, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, to strengthen focus on Open RAN business.
Aspire Technology is a leader in technology solutions and specialized system integration (SI) with skills in designing and integrating Open Networks.

Open RAN market revenue is expected to cross $32 billion by 2030 with a growth rate of 42 percent for a forecast period between 2022 and 2030, according to research reports.

Aspire Technology provides solutions and services across the full network lifecycle for legacy and open architectures, from 2G to 5G, and will utilize their expertise and experience in the Open Networks and Open RAN environment. The acquisition is expected to be completed in July 2022.

NEC is a leader in Open RAN. NEC Open Networks is an industry-leading ecosystem consisting of an end-to-end suite of open products and solutions, including Open RAN components for disaggregated hardware and software, xHaul transport, converged core, automation/ orchestration software and SI services.

Aspire Technology works with operators, vendors and other SI companies across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Aspire Technology has been an advocate for Open RAN from the outset and has built an Open Networks Lab enabling partners to fast-track development, integration and testing of Open Networks.

“The strong capabilities and the deep pool of talented engineers at Aspire Technology, combined with their portfolio of technology solutions and applications, is a big step forward for our NEC Open Networks strategy,” Naohisa Matsuda, General Manager of NEC’s 5G Strategy and Business said.

“The combination of NEC and Aspire Technology will provide benefits to our customers, both legacy network-based and those evolving to the more Open environment, and also to the broader 5G and Open RAN marketplace, which is growing rapidly,” Bill Walsh, Aspire Technology’s Founder and CEO said.