Who builds OPENER — and why?

DECT NR+ is a technology. A standard, a specification, a promise on paper. And what it becomes is decided by the people who start writing real code.

Dr. Andreas Wilzeck, Head of Spectrum Policy and Standards at Sennheiser, describes it this way:

The Opener Initiative develops and maintains Opener, an open reference implementation of the DECT-2020 NR protocol stack covering the MAC and upper layers. Opener combines community-driven development with industrial usability, implementing the OpenDECT-X vision of an open ecosystem.

Two things drive this. OpenDECT-X is the research project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space. The OPENER Initiative is the community developing, maintaining, and carrying the stack forward.

Work starts at the MAC layer, the level that decides who transmits when. Everything above it belongs to the scope.

Wilzeck calls it “The Path from Vision to Reality.” That DECT NR+ works in real production environments was shown by MERCI, the Franco-German predecessor project. Now comes the next step: open, permissively licensed, for everyone.

The stack is being built in the open, commit by commit.