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Is Open RAN key to the 5G future? By Sean Kinney

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Introduction

The true benefits of 5G will be

realized with massive scale – some-

thing that operators will have to

pay mightily to achieve. In car-

rier-led efforts to shift network

economics in their favor, the Open

RAN (radio access network) eco-

system has flourished in recent

years and is potentially poised for a

big breakthrough.

Major global communication ser-

vice providers like Telefónica and

Vodafone are exploring multi-ven-

dor RAN solutions for their network

footprints. In Japan, relatively new

market entrant Rakuten Mobile has

used an open architecture to build

its fully-virtualized network and is

evangelizing its open, cloud-native

approach as bringing a huge reduc-

tion in capital and operating costs.

DISH is following a similar path in

the U.S. but has yet to turn its own

internal efforts into a reference de-

sign á la the Rakuten Communica-

tions Platform.

Further, geopolitical issues have

prompted an examination of ven-

dor diversification and how to

foster innovation through govern-

ment investment; this is primarily

a function of U.S. sanctions against

China’s Huawei resulting in the

telecom giant being pinned down

by a lack of access to components

and markets. In this report, we will

explore the latest developments in

the Open RAN world, including per-

spectives from vendors, operators,

politicians and other ecosystem

stakeholders in an effort to under-

stand whether Open RAN is key to

the 5G future.

A key distinction here is the

overlap, and difference, between

virtualized RAN and Open RAN

– virtualized RAN decouples hard-

ware and software allowing net-

work functions typically run on

a proprietary technology stack to

exist as software workloads using

commodity or custom hardware

whereas Open RAN considers the

same but adds in modularity where-

in hardware and software from

multiple vendors can interoperate.

To contextualize Open RAN mo-

mentum, Dell’Oro Group recently

published a five-year forecast re-

port that projects vRAN revenues,

“defined as the proportion of RAN

baseband/compute capex that

will utilize general-purpose pro-

cessors for centralized radio units

and/or distributed radio units.

Dell’Oro forecasts that capex will

hit between $3 billion and $5 billion

between now and 2025. For Open

RAN radios, the firm projects ship-

ments will pass 1 million in the next

five years.

Dell’Oro Group VP and analyst

Stefan Pongratz conceded the pro-

jections may seem “overly optimis-

tic” given that Open RAN technol-

ogy is “relatively untested,” but,

“At the same time, the momentum

is improving, and we have adjust-

ed the outlook upward to reflect

a confluence of factors, includ-

ing promising results from initial

commercial deployments, growing

support from the incumbent RAN

suppliers, and increased geopolit-

ical uncertainty acting as a cata-

lyst for operators to rethink their

supplier strategies.”

Mobile Experts Chief Analyst Joe

Madden also sees a bright future

for Open RAN but drew an import-

ant distinction between sub-6 GHz

gear as a coverage play as opposed

to millimeter wave-based systems

geared towards multi-gigabit-per-

second throughput. Madden wrote

that, “Almost every company in

the [RAN] market is looking into

O-RAN, which will be the choice

solution for coverage problems.

O-RAN hardware and software can

be cheaper while achieving similar


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a virtualized baseband unit, which

can be further subdivided into a

central unit and a distributed unit.

That idea of subdividing function-

ality, in terms of either physical lo-

cation, type of workload or both, is

core to Open RAN and, more broad-

ly, 5G. And if different vendors pro-

vide different pieces, there has to

be an interoperability framework.

Central unit

The central unit, or CU, supports

non-real time Layer 2 and Layer 3

workloads like RRC and PDCP. In

the context of Open RAN, this is

software hosted on a server that

can be located in an edge datacen-

ter, cell site, central office, regional

datacenter, or even co-located with

Functional split

The notion of functional splits

in the RAN first came up in 3GPP

Release 14 and was further defined

in Release 15. The high-level idea is

that the primary 5G use cases — en-

hanced mobile broadband (eMBB),

ultra reliable low latency commu-

nications (URLLC), and massive in-

ternet of things — require a highly

flexible RAN architecture marked

by a, well, split of control and user

plane baseband unit functions to

enable a more feature rich, respon-

sive network that can adapt to sup-

port a wide variety of use cases and

deployment configurations.

The specific components, delin-

eated below, require open interfac-

es between remote radios units and

coverage as traditional architec-

tures. Considering a five-year time-

frame, Madden sees “rapid adoption

of O-RAN” coming, but focused on

fronthaul and F1 radio interfaces.

Regarding higher-frequency sys-

tems, “We have...identified some

major performance issues with

O-RAN networks.”

The vocabulary

Like most things telecom, Open

RAN brings with it a complex al-

phabet soup of acronyms and ini-

tialisms. Here we’re providing brief

explanations of some key terminol-

ogy. And, to be sure, this is a super-

ficial description of the following

terms and a fraction of the full set

of relevant jargon.

Image courtesy of Altran


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the distributed unit. A CU can sup-

port multiple distributed units con-

nected via midhaul.

Distributed unit

The distributed unit, DU, handles

real-time L1 and L2 scheduling,

baseband and RF processing, RLC,

MAC and some PHY functions. Sche-

matically the DU sites between the

CU and the remote radio unit but,

in both theory and practice, the DU

server can be co-located with the

CU, at a cell site, at an edge cloud

site or in a central office.

Remote radio unit

The remote radio unit (RRU) in-

cludes the digital front end, some

PHY layer functions, digital beam-

forming and other features associ-

ated with legacy cellular radios.

RRUs come in a variety of form

factors informed by manufactur-

er and site-specific deployment

considerations.

Parallel Wireless VP of Marketing

Eugina Jordan tied it all togeth-

er: “The future evolution of RAN

will be toward dynamic function-

al splits...The functionality of the

RAN will be distributed between

DUs and CUs as it is defined in

5G...In different scenarios, these

elements can collapse together and

create a single physical entity with

different virtual functionalities.”

RAN Intelligent Controller

The RAN Intelligent Controller

(RIC) is a software platform re-

sponsible for radio orchestration

and management; it supports ap-

plications like mobility and in-

terference management, network

policies, admission control and so

forth. In a vRAN, the RIC collects,

analyzes and acts upon network

data to optimize user experience

using artificial intelligence and

machine learning algorithms. The

RIC comes in two flavors, near-real

time and non-real time; the former

runs xApps that pool data from all

forms of radio infrastructure to

continuously optimize user experi-

ence and network efficiency based

on fluctuating demand and re-

source availability while the latter

takes on things like configuration,

device, fault, performance and life-

cycle management.

In June Nokia and AT&T conduct-

ed a RIC trial on the carrier’s mil-

limeter wave 5G network in New

York City. Nokia’s Sandro Tavares,

global head of mobile networks

marketing, told RCR Wireless News

the trial met its goals of improving

spectral efficiency. Measurement

and optimization xApps were used

to collect live network data. In this

case the partners used Measure-

ment Campaign, Automated Neigh-

bor Relation and Admission Control.

Describing the trial, Tavares said,

“It was focused on one specific part

of the city so not many sites. One

thing that is important to learn

from the architecture is that one

RIC instance can support several

base station sites. The way the ar-

chitecture is evolving, and especial-

ly on 5G networks, you can have

the RIC co-localized with the cen-

tralized until that basically han-

dles that part of the baseband pro-

cessing. Then, from that, you can

actually manage up to hundreds of

distributed units that are going to

be deployed in a city.”

While the focus in this trial was on

RAN optimization, Tavares said this

premise could be extended and open

up “new possibilities of third-party

applications on top of the network.

Basically any service that would

benefit from having access to low

latency could benefit from having a

more direct connection to the RAN.

For example, in just an anecdotal

way, if you’re looking to a video

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streaming service or a video com-

munication service, you can have an

xApp that can optimize the delivery

of the video to the terminals.”

The players

Open RAN Policy Coalition

In May this year, the Open RAN

Policy Coalition was established to

advocate for “vendor choice and

flexibility in next-generation net-

work deployments,” as Executive

Director Diane Rinaldo put it at

the time. This is necessary, she said,

“from a security and performance

standpoint. By promoting policies

that standardize and develop open

interfaces, we can ensure interoper-

ability and security across different

players and potentially lower the

barrier to entry for new innovators.”

The founding members were: Air-

span, Altiostar, AWS, AT&T, Cisco,

CommScope, Dell, DISH Network,

Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, In-

tel, Juniper Networks, Mavenir, Mi-

crosoft, NEC Corporation, NewEdge

Signal Solutions, NTT, Oracle, Par-

allel Wireless, Qualcomm, Rakuten,

Samsung Electronics America,

Telefónica, US Ignite, Verizon, VM-

Ware, Vodafone, World Wide Tech-

nology, and XCOM-Labs.

Shortly after its launch, Nokia

joined the group. Brian Hendricks,

Nokia’s VP of government rela-

tions in the Americas, in discuss-

ing the incumbent vendor’s move

to join, described an emerging

narrative wherein the Open RAN

ecosystem has created a falsely

adversarial relationship between

legacy vendors “and, on the other

side, folks that wanted to create a

new ecosystem.”

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There is a sense among poli-

cymakers, he continued, where,

“They felt like they’d be making a

choice. If they did things that were

more supportive of an acceleration

of openness that they’d be harm-

ing us. We don’t think that’s true

either.” In joining the Open RAN

Policy Coalition, Hendricks said,

Nokia is saying, “Let’s eliminate

the point that we’re not together

as an ecosystem and, perhaps, that

provides an impetus for action.”

The initial slate expanded in

June with new members Ciena,

Cohere Technologies, Crown Cas-

tle, DeepSig, Hewlett Packard En-

terprise, JMA Wireless, Marvell

Technology Group, Nokia, Pivotal

Commware, Quanta Cloud Tech-

nology, Radisys, Reliance Jio, Rob-

in.io and U.S. Cellular.

Since forming, the Open RAN

Policy Coalition has worked with

policymakers to gather support for

“new and existing” vendors; estab-

lish a global pool of “trusted sup-

pliers and service providers;” and

foster U.S. “technological leader-

ship both in 5G and future wireless

network development.”

Parallel Wireless CEO Steve Papa

has emerged as a strong proponent

of governmental machinations

that could bolster the U.S.’s position

in 5G tech particularly as it relates

to Chinese companies and Chi-

nese government-led investments.

Papa explained that Open RAN is

allowing “more innovators to par-

ticipate, which is good. But more

importantly, the U.S. government is

waking up to its role in supporting

the semiconductor market.” He has

called out the Made in China 2025

focus on developing semiconductor

expertise and other moves he char-

acterized as “a state actor tipping

the playing field…Our commercial

market in communications infra-

structure equipment is being dis-

torted by a state actor. We can let

that happen or we can counter it in

a similar way.”

Mavenir’s John Baker, SVP of

business development, discussing

the Open RAN Policy Coalition’s

launch, described the group as not

focused on “setting mandates to

force people to do things. It’s pure-

ly a recommendation to ensure the

industry takes the right precau-

tions, if you like, in going forward

in terms of building up the industry

and widening the supply chain.”

Baker said interoperability is key

to building up a more robust glob-

al supply chain. “That’s what the

whole Policy Coalition is about.

Let the vendor community decide

whether they want to compete in

the space or not.”

While Ericsson has a formidable

presence in 5G networking with

more than 100 global carrier con-

tracts, as well as an ever-advancing

set of vRAN, cloud RAN and atten-

dant products, it has not thrown in

with the Policy Coalition. In a state-

ment to RCR Wireless News issued

in May, the Swedish vendor said it

believes in “openness and that prod-

uct architecture needs to evolve to

support open interfaces and a mul-

titude of use cases in the future…

[But] this evolution needs to be

based on open standards and the

strong foundation built by 3GPP,

which has enabled the most wide-

ly adopted global technology with

over 8 billion mobile subscriptions.

3GPP is also unique as anyone can

enter on FRAND terms. This has led

to a highly competitive and consol-

idated RAN market. Similar con-

solidation can also be observed in

other parts of the industry, includ-

ing operations systems, chipsets

and devices. Furthermore, Ericsson

is actively contributing to O-RAN

and ONAP to further spur innova-

tion, bringing forward global scale


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with a strong ecosystem. We be-

lieve in open and fair competition.

To stay ahead in the 5G race, the

U.S. and other governments should

maintain their market-based ap-

proaches through technology-ag-

nostic policies. The focus of policy

makers needs to be on speeding up

5G deployment through spectrum

allocation and removing network

deployment barriers.”

O-RAN Alliance

The O-RAN Alliance formed in

February 2018, a combination of the

xRAN Forum and C-RAN Alliance,

with founding operator members

AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Tele-

kom, NTT Docomo and Orange. That

membership has since expanded to

include 22 additional operators and

more than 180 contributing compa-

nies representing virtually every

bit of domain expertise in the tele-

coms world.

The O-RAN Alliance is governed

by a Technical Steering Committee

that guides the work of nine work-

ing groups:

n Use cases and overall architec-

ture workgroup

n Non-real time RIC and A1 inter-

face workgroup

n Near-real time RIC and E2

interface workgroup

n Open fronthaul interfaces

workgroup

n Open F1/W1/E1X2/Xn

workgroup

n Cloudification and orchestra-

tion workgroup

n White-box hardware workgroup

n Stack reference design

workgroup

n Open X-haul transport

workgroup

The group’s work adheres to two

“core principles,” openness and

intelligence. According to O-RAN

Alliance, “Future RANs will be

built on a foundation of virtual-

ized network elements, white-box

hardware and standardized inter-

faces that fully embrace O-RAN’s

core principles of intelligence and

openness. An ecosystem of inno-

vative new products is already

emerging that will form the un-

derpinnings of the multi-vendor,

interoperable, autonomous RAN,

envisioned by many in the past,

but only now enabled by the global

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industry-wide vision, commitment

and leadership of O-RAN Alliance

members and contributors.”

To date, O-RAN Alliance has pub-

lished more than 50 specifications

ranging from DU-CU architecture

and APIs and indoor picocell hard-

ware architecture and require-

ments for sub-6 GHz to cloud archi-

tecture and deployment scenarios

for open vRAN and AI/ML work-

flow description and requirements.

Telecom Infra Project

The Telecom Infra Project (TIP)

got its start in 2016 by Facebook

and rather than the specification

work O-RAN Alliance engages in,

TIP focuses its efforts on building

and deploying infrastructure “to

advance global connectivity.” The

group is dedicated to expanding

the reach and quality of connec-

tivity – connecting the unconnect-

ed. According to TIP, “Half of the

world’s population is still not con-

nected to the internet...This limits

access to the multitude of con-

sumer and commercial benefits

provided by the internet, thereby

impacting GDP growth globally.

However, a lack of flexibility in the

current solutions — exacerbated

by a limited choice in technology

providers — makes it challenging

for operators to efficiently build

and upgrade networks.”

The TIP board of directors is made

up of:

n TIP Chairman and President

Yago Tenorio, head of network

strategy and architecture,

Vodafone

n Aaron Bernstein, director of

connectivity ecosystem pro-

grams, Facebook

n Caroline Chan, vice president

and general manager, 5G In-

frastructure Division, Network

Platforms Group, Intel

n David Del Val Latorre, direc-

tor of product innovation,

Telefónica

n Adburazak Mudesir, senior

vice president of technology

architecture and innovation,

Deutsche Telekom

n Howard Watson, CEO of technol-

ogy, service and operations, BT

TIP is organized into three broad

project groups – access, transport,

and core and services. Here we’ll fo-

cus access project sub-groups:

n OpenRAN works to “define and

build 2G, 3G and 4G RAN solu-

tions based on general-purpose

hardware and software-defined

technology.”

n OpenRAN 5G NR works to “de-

fine a whitebox platform for a

5G NR access point that is easy

to configure and deploy.”

To get an understanding of how

TIP is translating its collabora-

tive work into field trials, con-

sider Vodafone; the operator has

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engaged in trial activity in Mo-

zambique, Democratic Republic

of Congo, the U.K. and Ireland.

Indosat Ooredoo and Smartfren

are working on OpenRAN in Indo-

nesia. Related work is going on in

Malaysia, the United Arab Emir-

ates and North America.

Another key TIP development is

the Evenstar project, announced in

February this year. Vodafone, Deut-

sche Telekom, Mavenir, Parallel

Wireless, MTI, AceAxis and Face-

book Connectivity collaborated on

the Evenstar RRU for 4G and 5G

Open RAN deployments.

Facebook Connectivity Vice

President Dan Rabinovitsj dis-

cussed the social media giant’s

role in TIP and how the focus isn’t

finding a silver bullet for connect-

ing the 3.5 billion people that don’t

have access to reliable broadband,

but rather “investing in a building

block strategy” and recognizing

the economic realities requiring

this paradigm shift.

Building networks, from acquir-

ing the spectrum to deploying,

densifying and upgrading, is in-

credibly expensive and moving to a

cloud-based network and webscale

operation can address that. With

Evenstar, Rabinovitsj said, “The

investment we’re making today is

basically to make sure a number of

OEMs can take advantage of com-

mon, proven hardware SKUs...This

is a way that we can accelerate the

availability of competitive SKUs

that can be shipped all over the

world for both rural applications

and dense urban.”

The pros

We know the lingo, we know the

players, so let’s frame the Open RAN

value proposition to better under-

stand the benefits of disaggregat-

ing radio hardware and software,

trading single-purpose equipment

for general-purpose hardware and

moving vital network functions

into the cloud. First and foremost,

network economics need to change;

for 5G to scale and provide the kind

of meaningful business value tout-

ed in press releases and sales briefs,

something has to give. Telecom op-

erators are dropping billions of dol-

lars every year into building net-

works yet are met with stagnating

ARPUs, operational complexities

that introduce more costs, and it’s

not sustainable.

Rabinovitsj described it as “an

economic imperative. [Operators

are] going to be buying a lot more

stuff, particularly RAN equipment.

By focusing now on converting that

to an open architecture, an open

standard and a potential to source

white box hardware, I think this re-

ally changes the game.”

Tying that specifically to Open

RAN, he continued: “The reason

why Open RAN has become so in-

teresting is because, for the first

time, the telecom infra industry

and the mobile operators that are

driving the purchase of a lot of

“By focusing now on converting [RAN] to an open architecture, an open standard and a potential to source white box hardware, I think this really changes the game.”

Dan Rabinovitsj, Vice President, Facebook Connectivity

Ready to learn more? Connect with us at [email protected].

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this equipment, they realize they

need to get away from their mono-

lithic supply chain.” Following the

predominant thinking means op-

erators “effectively...end up with

very little control over the outcome

themselves. They’re very depen-

dent on their suppliers to deliver

the technology, the experience and

also the pace of innovation. This

has really been one of the founding

principles of TIP – let’s disaggregate

the hardware and software, let’s re-

invigorate the tech stack inside of

mobile operators because they lost

the engineering muscle that they

used to have. By doing that, this cre-

ates a more diverse supply chain, it

gives operators more freedom to

choose how and when they’re going

to deploy certain kinds of technolo-

gy and features, etc...and also gives

them the opportunity to reshape

the operation of their network and

the maintenance and support and

deployment of that.”

As mentioned above, another

big driver of Open RAN is option-

ality – letting operators mix and

match equipment and vendors and

products which, in turn, allows for

more flexibility in how networks

are built and what those networks

can support in terms of use cases. If

your goal is coverage, you can eco-

nomically expand by using exist-

ing central offices or regional data

centers to support CUs that can

be connected to DUs and RRUs in

areas that need better cellular cov-

erage. If the angle is an enterprise

network, a CU could be hosted at an

existing core site and a DU turned

up in an on-prem data center; add

some radios and you’ve got a cam-

pus network. This ability to cus-

tomize parallels the broad premise

of 5G as a flexible network that can

be what the user needs it to be.

As Viavi Solutions’ Marketing

Manager Owen O’Donnell put it,

“[Operators] couldn’t plug and play

bits of [infrastructure] between

different manufacturers. It was all

proprietary. It was all very limited

in choice. The biggest advantage it

gives operators is the freedom to

choose the individually disaggre-

gated components from different

vendors. The best in class that suits

their use cases while knowing full

well that the open interfaces mean

that they should all work when

plugged and played together.”

Speaking in a keynote address

during IFA, Qualcomm President

Cristiano Amon discussed the

company’s role in Open RAN–he

said modern networks are becom-

ing more “virtual, modular and

interoperable. Cellular infrastruc-

ture is evolving to become more

open, innovative and competitive.”

The roadmap for 5G encompasses

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a huge variety of use cases; in this

context, flexibility will be key.

Qualcomm’s 5G RAN platform,

initially launched in 2018, is being

used by numerous infrastructure

providers, including Airspan, Al-

tiostar, Baicells, Corning, Radisys,

Rakuten, Samsung, Sercomm and

now, Japanese powerhouses Fujitsu

and NEC.

In response to a question from

RCR Wireless News, Amon dis-

cussed Open RAN as a potential

vector of disruption to traditional

network equipment providers. “I

believe that vRAN and Open RAN

creates a huge opportunity for some

of the network equipment provid-

ers that will lead the transition in

what Infrastructure 2.0 is.” He said

incumbents could “take a leading

role in the software that will run

in those networks and will provide

feature parity between the existing

systems and the new systems.”

He added, “It could be an interest-

ing opportunity for some of the ex-

isting players to, over time, evolve

into a very powerful software

provider in addition to what they

do today in providing an integrat-

ed solution.” RAN disaggregation,

Amon said, “creates a significant

opportunity, I think, for Qualcomm.

We’re one of the few companies

that have the assets that we can

build the engine of the new Open

RAN base station and we’re very

excited about that opportunity.”

Deutsche Telekom earlier this

year announced it is working with

VMware and Intel on an “open and

intelligent virtual RAN…plat-

form, based on O-RAN standards.”

DT Board Member Claudia Nemat

also appeared during Amon’s

keynote. She linked Open RAN to

“flexibility, scalability and accel-

erated innovation…Open RAN for

me primarily means a modular

hardware and software setup uti-

lizing all the benefits coming from

virtualization and cloud together

with open interfaces.”

While the Open RAN conversa-

tion is often focused on smaller,

newer equipment suppliers, it’s im-

portant to note that major incum-

bent vendors like Ericsson, Nokia

and Samsung are all tracking the

opportunity and adapting their

product portfolios.

Nokia’s Tavares, head of global

mobile networks marketing, said

there’s a lot of merit to Open RAN,

“But there is a lot of hype around

it as well. We are looking at a more

facts-based approach to Open

RAN – what are the areas where,

first of all, we can achieve the

best results in a shorter period of

time and what are the areas that

add a lot of complexity and need a

bit more work before they become

a reality?”

He said Nokia is taking a prag-

matic approach meant to “get the

benefits of openness with more

choices for our customers, the

innovation that comes with the

functionality like RIC, but without

losing too much on performance or

without delaying the adoption of

these advanced features that are

actually being required by our cus-

tomers right now.”

In June, Nokia announced com-

mercial availability later this year

of its AirScale Cloud RAN solution

with general availability follow-

ing in 2021. This builds on what

Nokia calls a vRAN 1.0 configura-

tion which has been in commercial

use in the U.S. since 2019. The next

step, vRAN 2.0, expands on that to

include a DU running on gener-

al-purpose x86 server hardware as

well as a fronthaul gateway. “The

result is a fully cloudified and dis-

aggregated 5G base station that

provides scalability, low latency,

high performance and capacity, as

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20200904/5g/ericsson-deploys-5g-network-near-texas-hq-to-run-real-world-use-cases

https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/06/23/nokia-commercializes-next-generation-5g-cloud-ran/


14

well as several network architec-

ture options, to meet ever-increas-

ing market demands,” according to

Nokia. vRAN 3.0 will be marked by

the addition of GPU-based hard-

ware acceleration capabilities.

Ericsson, which this passed 100

commercial 5G contracts, is an ac-

tive, contributing member of the

O-RAN Alliance, but is significant-

ly more bullish on its integrated,

virtualized RAN products more so

than going full-on with Open RAN.

Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm made

clear the company isn’t going to

eschew Open RAN during a July

earnings call but contextualized

the issue based on his reckoning

that Europe is behind other mar-

kets in LTE. “That has led to a loss of

a lot of economic value in Europe as

a continent,” he said during a July

earnings call.

“We are going to be a participant,”

he said. “We’re already active. But

for the high performance applica-

tions, today we do not see O-RAN

as a way to speed up the rollout. It’s

rather a way to slow down right

now. When O-RAN is ready, we’re

going to be there. If we are going to

repeat that mistake [with 5G] in Eu-

rope, I think the European economy

has a problem. Europe, as a conti-

nent, needs to not be behind in 5G…

The big value of 5G is not the net-

work, the network infrastructure.

It’s not the operators. It’s actually

the applications that run on top of

the network.”

Samsung in July announced a vir-

tualized 5G RAN solution compris-

ing virtualized CUs and DUs and up-

dated radios. And in keeping with

the Open RAN trend, Samsung said

its new vRAN solution will work

with radio interfaces developed

within the O-RAN Alliance. The

company said the 5G vRAN solu-

tion, which runs on generic x-86

hardware, will be available this

quarter. The vCU component was

commercialized in April last year

and is in commercial use in Korea,

Japan and the United States. The

vendor is planning to trial the vDU

in North America later this year.

While a virtual RAN can be made

open with the integration of open

radio interfaces, a virtual RAN can

also be a proprietary kit. Samsung’s

latest ticks both boxes. Alok Shah,

vice president of networks strate-

gy, told RCR Wireless News, “Sam-

sung is a leader in Open RAN, and

as an active contributor to stan-

dards groups like 3GPP and O-RAN

Alliance, we have achieved open

fronthaul interoperability with

multiple vendors…and for multiple

operator networks. Our fully virtu-

alized RAN solution supports our

growing portfolio of O-RAN-com-

pliant radio solutions.”

Samsung is growing its share of

global networks business with Tier

1 deals in the U.S., Canada, Korea,

Japan and New Zealand. In the

latest blockbuster infra deal, Sam-

sung snagged a five-year, $6.6 bil-

lion contract with Verizon. While

little has been released about the

details of the contract, including

the specific equipment being pro-

vided to Verizon, Samsung said in a

“When O-RAN is ready, we’re going to be there.”

Börje Ekholm, President and CEO, Ericsson

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-introduces-fully-virtualized-5g-ran-for-commercial-availability

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-introduces-fully-virtualized-5g-ran-for-commercial-availability


15

statement that the pair will “con-

tinue to push the boundaries of

5G innovation,” confirming that at

least a portion of the deal is direct-

ly related to 5G.

Back to this idea of Open RAN as

an economic imperative, Parallel

Wireless’ CEO Papa touched on the

notion of openness as it relates to

RAN and also how geopolitics and

history should inform lawmakers’

current postures toward fostering a

U.S. telecom ecosystem. He said the

Open RAN business model matches

the generational shift in cellular.

“The economics of a coverage tech-

nology and architecture don’t scale

well as a capacity architecture. The

entire business models of the incum-

bent vendors don’t work and don’t

map to what the people deploying

the equipment require given the

economic realities.”

The cons

While the benefits of Open RAN

(advantageous network econom-

ics and deployment flexibility

chief among them), there are

also well-articulated issues asso-

ciated with the technology. One

question is whether operators are

trading reduced capex related to

RAN infrastructure for increased

integration costs as someone has

to do the work, and be paid for it,

of integrating multi-vendor kit.

There are also questions around the

ability to scale Open RAN in a way

that retains performance parity as-

sociated with an integrated infra-

structure stack. And another issue

we’ll explore further on this paper

is around security.

Ericsson’s Paul Challoner, vice

president of network product solu-

tions, acknowledged there’s “poten-

tially [a] reduction in capex through

commoditization of some of the

products, [but] how many of the

integration costs are one time and

how many are recurring through-

out hardware/software lifecycle

management?”

Challoner continued: “I think the

industry has to work through those

integration challenges. Ultimately

it can be done. But the specifica-

tions need more maturity and there

needs to be constructs, open lab

structures, to do that integration.

But that’s going to take some time

to work through.”

He also raised the question of

scalability, particularly as it re-

lates to supplying compatible ra-

dio. “Who is it that makes the radi-

os? And which Open RAN vendors

can then provide millions of radi-

os around the world every year?”

All in all, he said of Open RAN,

“I think it’s a journey. We need to

take the Open RAN architectures

and evolve those so they can meet

the demanding requirements of

today’s networks.”

To address the perceived chal-

lenges of integration, Viavi’s

O’Donnell points to test and

validation work that can be

done in laboratories settings or

“I think the industry has to work through those integration challenges. Ultimately it can be done...But that’s going to take some time to work through.”

Paul Challoner, Vice President of Network Product Solutions, Ericsson


16

environments like the Open Test

and Integration Center, a consor-

tium focused on letting operators

and vendors test out Open RAN

solutions prior to deployment.

This gets to the heart of the ques-

tion around, if an Open RAN site

has an issue, which of the multiple

vendors does an operator look to? “If

somehow the overall KPI is failing,

how do you point to the individu-

al component that’s causing the

problem?” he mused. “That’s going

to be an issue. But, from our point

of view, it’s testing. The testing and

the finger pointing will be worked

out in the lab...before it’s deployed.

If you’re doing a network slicing

test and the latency is not matching

the requirements, then it’s in the lab

that you’ll be able to monitor the

latency KPI from the RU to the DU

and from the DU to the CU.”

More on balancing capex savings

with more complex integration,

Radisys Vice President of Engi-

neering Ganesh Shenbagaraman

said, “This is a question that is of-

ten seen from an operator point of

view. There has been a tradition or

norm of just having two or three

vendors. The new dimension or

the new reality of having multi-

ple vendors is sometimes scary for

the operators. One reason is the

integration costs and second is the

time taken to integrate. That is

not a completely solved puzzle yet.

There are companies looking at

this space, Radisys being one such

system integrator.”

So what do two major U.S. opera-

tors think? In September, the U.S.

Federal Communications Commis-

sion brought together a variety of

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18

Open RAN stakeholders for its Fo-

rum on 5G Open Radio Access Net-

works. During the event, AT&T’s

Laurie Bigler, assistant vice presi-

dent and tech staff member for ac-

cess analytics and systems, point-

ed to trials of the Radio Intelligent

Controller (RIC) the operator has

conducted on its millimeter wave

5G network in New York as a proof

point of the company’s interest,

but also noted challenges around

“ensuring the reliability, integrity

and performance for our custom-

ers,” which she acknowledged is

not unique to Open RAN.

“O-RAN is still developing speci-

fications at this time and some are

further along,” Bigler said. “Having

specs alone does not guarantee in-

teroperability or performance. We

really see that integration is the

biggest challenge ahead. You really

don’t find the issues or gaps with

the specs until you actually try to

integrate two vendors’ equipment.”

In terms of how Open RAN fits

into AT&T deployment plans,

Bigler said she foresees a “gradual

introduction of Open RAN into our

existing network.”

Lori Fountain, director of net-

work infrastructure planning with

Verizon, made clear that Verizon

is “a player in O-RAN as well as an

early adopter,” but said incorpora-

tion of the emerging technology is

“a journey. We’re kind of at the first

step of that journey, which is the

ability to mix and match baseband

software with an open [radio unit]

and we’re excited.”

She continued: “The challenge we

see at Verizon is scale and maturity.

We have a mature network here at

Verizon and it’s not a greenfield net-

work. We support O-RAN entirely

and know it is the future. We will be

adopting this critical architecture

and in a timeframe that success-

fully allows the network to mature

gracefully but, at the same time,

protecting our customers.”

Open RAN and security

One reason Open RAN is receiving

so much attention at the moment

relates to Chinese infrastructure

powerhouse Huawei. In the larg-

er and ongoing geopolitical battle

between China and the U.S., the

“The testing and the finger pointing will be worked out in the lab...before it’s deployed.”

Owen O’Donnell, Marketing Manager, Viavi Solutions

“O-RAN is still developing specifications at this time and some are further along. Having specs alone does not guarantee interoperability or performance.”

Laurie Bigler, Assistant Vice President, Member Tech Staff, Access Analytics and Systems, AT&T

https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/events/forum-5g-virtual-radio-access-networks



https://www.rcrwireless.com/20200618/open_ran/optimizing-open-ran-nokia-att-cloud-native-ric

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19

telecom sector has emerged as a key

front. U.S. policymakers have man-

dated the removal of Huawei gear

from domestic networks and are

working hard to not only preclude

Huawei from selling gear into the

country, but also broadly working

to curtail Huawei’s reach by cut-

ting off access to components pro-

duced in the U.S. This process is also

playing out in other geographies

with the U.K. recently asking its

operators to remove Huawei equip-

ment from their networks, which

was preceded by New Zealand, Ja-

pan and other countries cutting the

vendor out of 5G builds.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike

Pompeo, kicking off the Federal

Communication Commission’s Sep-

tember Forum on 5G Open Radio

Access Networks, didn’t mince

words in addressing what he called

the “China challenge...The Chinese

Communist Party is leveraging

it’s technological prowess to erode

freedom and democracy here at

home and indeed all around the

world,” Pompeo said.

In his address, the Secretary of

State didn’t once use the phrase

“Open RAN,” but he did heavily use

the term “clean” to describe coun-

tries and companies that don’t use

Huawei equipment. The FCC re-

cently collected information from

U.S.-based “eligible telecommuni-

cations carriers” that use Huawei

or ZTE “equipment and services.”

There are more than 50 companies

on that list, including CenturyLink,

Hiawatha Communications, Okla-

homa Western Telephone Company,

Verizon and Windstream.

Pompeo said he’s “very pleased”

that approximately 30 countries

have banned Huawei “and chosen

clean vendors.” He called those na-

tions “clean countries” with “clean

telcos...The clean network maximiz-

es connectivity without risk from

untrusted vendors and stops the

CCP censorship of Americans.”

Ericsson recently published a pa-

per titled, “Security considerations

of Open RAN,” that, at a high-lev-

el, framed the issue of security in

Open RAN versus an integrated

RAN as having “the potential to ex-

pand the threat and attack surface

of the network in numerous ways,”

according to Head of Security, Net-

work Product Solutions, Jason S.

Boswell. Among those ways are:

n Expanded threat surface based

on new interfaces like open

fronthaul, A1 and E2;

n Potential to exploit the

near-real time RIC and the

xApps it supports;

n “Decoupling of hardware

increases threat to trust chain;”

n And “adherence to open source

best practices,” which the

author notes is “not exclusive

to O-RAN.”

Boswell continued in a blog post

that accompanied the paper: “Sever-

al service providers intend to lever-

age virtual RAN in an Open RAN

architecture to build secure, open,

interoperable, disaggregated, vir-

tual networks based upon industry

standards. As the industry evolves

towards RAN virtualization, with

3GPP or O-RAN, it is important that

a risk-based approach is taken to

adequately address security risk. Se-

cure Open RAN systems may require

additional security measures not yet

fully addressed, a trusted stack for

software and hardware, and interop-

erability between vendors with a

common understanding and imple-

mentation of security requirements.”

Ericsson made its position abun-

dantly clear but that position re-

ceived some quick pushback from

leaders of two major Open RAN

providers. In a webinar focused

on a newly articulated partner-

ship between Rakuten Mobile and


20

Telefónica (which we’ll cover later

in this report), Rakuten Mobile CTO

Tareq Amin and Telefónica Global

CTIO Enrique Blanco raised coun-

terpoints on the security issue.

Amin said he has “huge respect”

for the Swedish incumbent but

said, when considering “locked

and proprietary gear,” security is

rooted in the vendor telling you

it’s secure. “As an operator, you

should have 100% visibility. You

should know, end to end, what

is happening in the network. Se-

curing the perimeter and getting

visibility is 80% of the headache...I

actually have a very contradicto-

ry opinion, that it is an extreme-

ly secure system because at least

I have complete visibility and

control about what comes in and

what goes out.”

Blanco said an open network lets

the operator “see what is happen-

ing...It isn’t a black box. We prefer

to be open. Open RAN is not an ad-

ditional concern...If there is a black

box, I cannot guarantee security.”

In the U.S., DISH is building an

open, greenfield standalone 5G net-

work using some of the same ven-

dors Rakuten Mobile has worked

with. Speaking at the FCC session,

DISH Chief Commercial Officer

Stephen Bye said, “We’ve taken a

sort of zero-trust model. The real

focus on a clean network is vital.”

On the security architecture of

an open network, Bye said, “It’s a

lot easier to find the cockroaches

when the lights are on [rather]

than fumbling around in the dark

trying to find something.”

In a paper published in June by

the Open RAN Policy Coalition, the

group describes “common miscon-

ceptions about...Open RAN is that

open interfaces introduce security

risk. In fact, these same open inter-

faces, defined in technical specifi-

cations, provide a foundation and

architecture for improving secu-

rity. Although operators procure

and integrate open RAN network

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“It’s a lot easier to find cockroaches when the lights are on [rather] than fumbling around in the dark.”

Stephen Bye, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, DISH


21

functions in new ways, operators

bring the same expertise, diligence

and requirements for security and

resilience to these environments.”

Also in June, the Policy Coalition

provided comments to NTIA as it

considers how Open RAN fits into

the National Strategy to Secure

5G. The theme was that essentially

that standards and interoperability

create trust, and that virtualized

and network function segmenta-

tion enhances security.

According to the Open RAN Pol-

icy Coalition filing, “From a secu-

rity perspective, software-based

networking and virtualization

enables additional security tech-

niques such as sandboxing, mi-

cro-segmentation, containeriza-

tion, and network slicing. There

are also important trust and secu-

rity capabilities of virtualization

enabled by modern hardware and

processors. The end result is that

through advancements in hard-

ware and virtualization, operators

have more tools to ensure the secu-

rity and resilience of the network.”

Open RAN for rural networks

When you look at current Open

RAN deployment patterns and fu-

ture expectations, it’s decidedly

a mixed bag. On the one hand, Ra-

kuten Mobile is successfully run-

ning at scale in an incredibly dense

urban environment, on the other

we see Vodafone U.K. focused in on

Open RAN as a rural coverage play.

So how do we square this apparent

divergent thinking?

“We don’t see open RAN as a niche

play only for rural deployments,”

Facebook Connectivity’s Rabino-

vitsj said. “It just so happens it’s one

of the best places to go prove out

that this technology is meeting the

full requirements of an operator. If

you’re going to test a new suppli-

er...you’re probably going to take a

more conservative approach when

you get started. These rural areas

have turned out to be a really nice

proving ground.”

Indeed, Vodafone began testing

Open RAN, in partnership with

TIP, in Mozambique and Demo-

cratic Republic of Congo. It has

since brought Open RAN to Tur-

key, South Africa and U.K., and

late last year said it would include

Open RAN suppliers in a tender

covering 100,000 sites and cellular

generations from 2G to 5G. Voda-

fone’s Tenorio, also head of the TIP

board, said in November at the TIP

Summit in Amsterdam, “Right now

this is the biggest tender in the this

industry in the world. It’s a really

big opportunity for Open RAN to

scale. We are ready to swap out

sites if we have to. Our ambition

is to have modern, up to date, low-

er-cost kit in every site.”

In the U.S., Open RAN is being

considered as a cost-effective way

for rural carriers to replace Hua-

wei infrastructure. Steven K. Berry,

president and CEO of the Compet-

itive Carriers Association, told us

more than a dozen of the group’s

members use Huawei gear and are

grappling with the rip and replace

process. As to the role of Open RAN

in that process, “Hopefully that’s a

cost-saving opportunity for many

of the small carriers. We call it the

rip and replace but...we don’t want

any customers, consumers, in rural

America to go without service, so

it’s really replace then rip. It’s going

to be complicated. We’re working

hard to identify where we begin.”

“Every network is different,”

Berry said “There’s not a one size

fits all. People are feeling that out

right now. It’s brand new. System

integrators are sort of key to how

you get all the different slices of

virtualized components together.

There’s a lot of positives there and


22

we hope O-RAN, in fact, shows bet-

ter promises on solutions for legacy

networks going forward.”

Shenbagaraman of Radisys

concurred with Rabinovitsj’s as-

sessment. “What many operators

are doing is taking a gradual ap-

proach. The thought process, or

the current thinking seems to be,

try it out first in a rural, less-dense

environment. Even if the solution

has some risk of failure...that’s tol-

erable to try it out.”

Recall Challoner’s concern

around the scalability of Open

RAN – ”which Open RAN vendors

can then provide millions of radios

around the world every year?”

Altiostar and Mavenir In June

announced they will work together

with equipment OEMs to develop

radio units compatible with the

frequency bands used by Tier 1 U.S.

operators as well as smaller carriers

with rural and regional operations.

Altiostar CEO Ashraf Dahod said

the goal of the partnership is to “en-

sure operators in the U.S. have a tru-

ly open and end-to-end infrastruc-

ture that will be cost effective and

allow them to grow their business.”

In a comment sent to media and

analysts following the Altiostar/

Mavenir announcement, Parallel

Wireless CEO Steve Papa pointed

out that the rural operators target-

ed as potential Open RAN buyers

need to ensure the durability of

near-term investments. And, that,

he said equates to investments not

just in radios but also into “semi-

conductor innovation.”

From Papa of Parallel Wireless’

email: “The biggest challenge for

operators is ‘future proofing’ their

investments. They need to know

that if they deploy O-RAN, that be-

yond just solving the rural problem,

they can also ultimately solve the

high-end 5G massive MIMO prob-

lem. In order for operators to make

big O-RAN investments they need

confidence that Open RAN can

solve their entire problem.

Ericsson is also working to cap-

ture the coming spend on rural rip

and replace, somewhere in the $2

billion range. According to Chal-

loner, “The Open RAN for rural is a

potential...starting point. The per-

formance is less demanding than

the urban environment. So rural is

an immediate opportunity.”

Operator focus: Rakuten Mobile

Rakuten Mobile launched a

fully-virtualized, cloud-based LTE

network on April 8. Today the

network comprises 6,015 macro sites

and supports more than 1 million

subscribers that use around half a

gigabit of mobile data per day with

50% of that traffic being video and

streaming. The company has said

this approach has yielded a 40% re-

duction in capex and 30% reduction

“I believe Rakuten is the only company today in the world that has a practical experience, [a] battle-proven organization that understands what is this concept of Open RAN, beyond saying we’re going to create an Open RAN coalition.”

Tareq Amin, Chief Technology Officer of Rakuten Mobile, and Group Executive Vice President and Chief Architecture Officer, Rakuten


23

in opex. As it moves on to providing

5G services in the near future.

Tareq Amin, Rakuten Mobile

CTO and Group EVP and CAO for

Rakuten, has emerged as the most

visible evangelist of Open RAN and

the possibilities associated with a

virtualized, cloud-native network.

In addition to building its green-

field network, the company has

also packaged its network architec-

ture, including telco applications

and software from multiple ven-

dors, OSS and BSS systems handling

customer billing and activation

systems, edge computing and virtu-

al network management functions,

into the Rakuten Communications

Platform which the company is

pitching to global operators, enter-

prises and governments.

“When we meet with the govern-

ments, we tell them that truthfully,

deploying telecom infrastructure

is expensive and we think we need

to reinvent that with our partners

and ecosystem innovators, so of

course governments have a huge

interest,” he said in a session with

journalists. “I think it’s not just

about the security aspect of it, but

it’s about making 5G far more af-

fordable than what it is today. 5G

infrastructure today is not cheap.

The business model and ROI for 5G

is yet to be realized. I believe Ra-

kuten is the only company today

in the world that has a practical

experience, [a] battle-proven orga-

nization that understands what is

this concept of Open RAN, beyond

saying we’re going to create an

Open RAN coalition.”

Beyond just opening the RAN,

Amin is focused on pervasive open-

ness and building a network as a

platform for collaborative innova-

tion. He has noted that beyond just

disaggregating RAN, Rakuten has

disaggregated the procurement pro-

cess, working directly with vendors

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to build the equipment needed to

help achieve the company’s goals.

But, “Rakuten has no interest to be

another vendor in this space. We

want to co-innovate, we want to

partner and deliver on the concept

of openness, partnering together

on leveraging open source technol-

ogies and participating in co-inno-

vation on key industry forums, and

also creating a global network of

innovation labs to partner together

with global mobile operators, in-

dustry and government.”

Operator focus: Vodafone UK

Vodafone has made clear it ex-

pects Open RAN technologies to

play a big role across its multi-na-

tional network footprint. In the

U.K. market, the operator in August

brought live a 4G Open RAN cell

site at the Royal Welsh Showground

in Polys, Wales.

Vodafone U.K. CTO Scott Petty

called the move an “important

milestone” and said Open RAN can

“make us less dependent on cur-

rent larger technology suppliers,

and find ways to reduce the cost

of rolling out mobile coverage.

Open RAN can also help close the

digital divide between urban and

rural Britain.”

In a statement, Vodafone U.K.

identified U.S.-based Mavenir as

its Open RAN vendor. Mavenir has

an end-to-end portfolio of telecom

software solutions and has both

virtual and open radio access net-

work products. The deployment

uses Dell and Kontron servers for

the CU and DU, respectively.

To Petty’s comment about closing

the digital divide, Vodafone U.K. is

also working with its competitors

on the Shared Rural Network ini-

tiative where the country’s oper-

ators share cell sites to more eco-

nomically expand coverage. This

government-backed program is

working to provide 4G coverage to

95% of the U.K.

Matt Warman, Digital Infrastruc-

ture Minister, said in a statement:

“OpenRAN gives mobile companies

the flexibility to use multiple sup-

pliers in their 4G and 5G networks.

This is vital to help the market

grow, build resilience and give

people fast, reliable and secure

internet connections wherever

they live and work...This technol-

ogy can make a real difference in

improving connectivity in rural

communities and I look forward

to continuing to work closely with

Vodafone and other operators on

our plans to diversify the telecoms

supply chain.”

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.K.

Maximizing your Open RAN Investment Whether your challenges lie in interoperability with legacy technologies, multi-vendor components, or optimizing the performance of your network as a whole, VIAVI delivers a one stop shop, for Open RAN testing.

As part of the O-RAN Alliance and a contributor to the development of O-RAN Specifications, VIAVI understands the move toward Open RAN is a major shift in network architecture. Ensuring the cost-to-performance ratio in a multi-vendor open network is equivalent to or better than a traditional single-vendor network is vital. VIAVI offers a first-to-market and comprehensive O-RAN Test Suite to meet the needs of equipment designers, deployment and operational teams. The suite delivers true end-to-end network testing across the entire lifecycle to ensure you have the confidence that all components in your open network have been tested in a trusted and controlled environment.

With years of experience working alongside all major NEMs and small cell manufacturers VIAVI has built a reputation as a trusted supplier of leading-edge cellular test equipment. Our flexible approach to Validation, Verification and Visibility allows us to support our customers with the various options and configurations that are required to deploy a successful Open Radio Access Network.

To find out more about how VIAVI can help you maximize your Open RAN investment visit: viavisolutions.com/oran

Command the 5G network.

https://www.viavisolutions.com/en-us/solutions/service-providers/wireless/o-ran


26

Similar to the situation in the

U.S., the U.K. government in July

announced that Huawei gear must

be completely removed from the

country’s 5G networks by the end

of 2027, following new recommen-

dations by the National Cyber

Security Center (NCSC) on the im-

pact of U.S. sanctions against the

telecommunications vendor. The

government also confirmed that

it will also implement a total ban

on the purchase of new Huawei kit

for 5G, starting in 2021. The deci-

sion was made in a meeting of the

National Security Council (NSC)

chaired by the Prime Minister Bo-

ris Johnson, in response to recent

U.S. sanctions.

Operator focus: Telefónica

Telefónica, which also operates

the brands Movistar, O2 and Vivo,

provides connectivity services to

more than 340 million customers

in 14 countries, has for some time

been crystal clear about it’s Open

RAN plans. Speaking almost one

year ago at Huawei’s Global Mobile

Broadband Forum in Zurich, Swit-

zerland, Global CTIO Enrique Blan-

co described the shift to Open RAN

as “extraordinarily ambitious.” De-

coupling hardware and software to

create a programmable network “is

a must because we need to monitor

huge growth in the data capabil-

ities for our customers. This net-

work needs to be open and we need

to get all these capabilities.”

Jump forward to March 2020:

Telefónica articulated plans to

test Open RAN in Brazil, Germany,

Spain and the United Kingdom. At

the time, the operator assembled a

group of specialists to advance it’s

ambitions. The following vendors

were announced at the time:

n Altiostar, which Telefónica has

also invested in, to provide its

vRAN software;

n Intel to provide its Xeon

processors to power servers

supporting baseband radio

functions;

n Supermicro, a provider of a

multiple telco solutions, includ-

ing those geared toward edge

computing and Open RAN DUs;

n And Xilinx for its Zynq UltraS-

cale+ RF SoCs for 4G and 5G

radios.

As an aside, Xilinx in September

announced its shipping a T1 Telco

Accelerator Card designed for 5G

Open RAN with a focus on simpli-

fying fronthaul termination at the

DU and providing Layer 1 offload.

Xilinx’s Mike Wissolik, director of

product marketing for the Wired

and Wireless Group, said the card

was developed in response to op-

erator demand. According to the

company, the T1 Telco Accelerator

Card reduces the numbers of CPU

cores needs to operate a DU and de-

livers a 45x encoding throughput as

compared to a server running the

same functions without the accel-

eration capabilities. Wissolik said

that at the end of 2019 and into the

beginning of 2020, “Everyone came

to us asking, ‘What’re you doing in

O-RAN?’ As we were developing

“The traditional radio vendor, it is not enough.”

Enrique Blanco, Global Chief Technology and Information Officer, Telefónica


27

this in the early stages, it really

hammered home for us that there’s

really demand behind this.”

And, in the latest, Blanco and Ra-

kuten Mobile’s Amin in September

announced a memorandum of un-

derstanding that will see the two

companies collaborate on Open

RAN, 5G core and other autono-

mous network functionality. In a

webinar, Blanco laid out a three-

phase timeline for driving Open

RAN tech into 50% Telefónica’s net-

work in the 2022-2025 timeframe.

Phase 0 is underway and includes

pilot projects. Phase 1 is marked by

initial deployments between 2021

and 2022. And Phase 2 is massive

deployment beginning in 2022.

“The traditional radio vendor, it

is not enough,” Blanco said, adding

that Open RAN is a “necessity. We are

trying to build a common approach

in the architecture. We are working

together on how we can be much

more close on the procurement.”

Addressing the ongoing question

of whether Open RAN can operate

at scale, Blanco said, “This is not a

wish. This is not a hope. Rakuten

demonstrated that it is a fact.”

The MoU with Rakuten Mobile

considers joint lab testing and trial

activity, partnership on acceler-

ating time to market, ecosystem

development, global roaming and

joint hardware and software pro-

curement encompassing CUs, DU,

RRUs and other equipment.

Blanco said in a statement:

“Telefónica strongly believes that

networks are evolving towards end-

to-end virtualization through an

open architecture, and Open RAN is

a key piece of the whole picture...It

will change the supplier ecosystem

and revolutionize the current 5G

industry in the medium and long

term...Telefónica and Rakuten Mo-

bile have signed this MoU to work

towards evaluating and demon-

strating the capability and feasibil-

ity of Open RAN architectures and

make them a reality.”

Operator focus: Inland Cellular

Inland Cellular provides wireless

services to more than 35,000 sub-

scribers in north, central Idaho and

southeastern Washington. The car-

rier worked with Parallel Wireless

on its Open RAN deployment.

According to an interview with

The Washington Post, Inland

worked with Ericsson on its 3G net-

work and with Nokia on its LTE net-

work. Company EVP Chip Damato

said its work with the two incum-

bent European vendors always ran

into cost problems. “Anything you

wanted to do was a huge financial

hit on us,” he said in the piece by

Jeanne Whalen. “Based on what we

were doing, we couldn’t survive. …

So we went out looking for alterna-

tives.” Damato reckoned Open RAN

cut per site cost by around 40% or

approximately $20,000.

On the political side, a number of

small U.S. operators that previously Image courtesy of Telefónica

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/29/huawei-alternative-oran-idaho/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/29/huawei-alternative-oran-idaho/


28

used Huawei kit have been directed

to rip and replace that equipment

in exchange for infrastructure

from “trusted” vendors. Open RAN

vendors are also seeking U.S. invest-

ment in the technology to better

compete against Huawei around

the world.

As Damato told The Washington

Post, “We’re not going to be in the

mix when it comes to any kind of

regulatory issue or anything that

happens at the government level.

We’ve got to go out and be as re-

sourceful as we can.”

A case study published by Intel

sketches out the set up Inland has

put together with Parallel Wire-

less. According to the case study,

Parallel’s Open RAN controller

software is running on a Dell EMC

server stack, which uses Intel’s

Xeon D-2100 processors. Parallel’s

software-defined remote radio

head supports Inland’s 600 MHz

spectrum and, along with the vir-

tualized baseband, can be upgraded

from 4G to 5G.

In addition to talk, text and mobile

data, Inland’s investment in Open

RAN is meant to support additional

use cases such as smart homes, con-

nected farms, smart enterprise and

private networks, according to the

Intel case study.

Operator focus: DISH

The background on how DISH

arrived at where it is today — build-

ing a nationwide, facilities-based,

greenfield 5G network — is com-

plex and voluminous, so we’ll fo-

cus on how it’s approaching Open

RAN and, as an extension of that, a

cloud-native architecture.

Ima

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ourt

esy

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llel

Wir

eles

s

https://builders.intel.com/docs/networkbuilders/inland-cellular-picks-parallel-wireless-openran-for-4g-5g.pdf


29

To the greenfield point, DISH’s

Bye said during the FCC’s recent fo-

rum: “We don’t have any legacy. We

don’t have 3G, we don’t have 4G, in

fact we don’t even have sort of an-

tiquated OSS and BSS systems that

we’re having to retrofit into this ar-

chitecture. I think a lot of things we

see unfolding...around cloud-native

networking are really vital to un-

locking the potential that O-RAN

provides. To us, O-RAN is an import-

ant step but one step.”

In April, DISH began publicly

discussing its vendors. First up,

Mavenir. Chief Network Officer

Marc Rouanne said, “Mavenir will

help us lay the foundation for an

innovative, software-defined net-

work with the flexibility, intelli-

gence and scalability to deliver

applications that will redefine the

U.S. wireless industry.”

Then, in July, DISH said it’s work-

ing with Altiostar to bring O-RAN

compliant solutions, as well as ar-

tificial intelligence and machine

learning for end-to-end automa-

tion, zero-touch commissioning and

faster network recovery. Specifical-

ly, DISH will use Altiostar software

and work with Japan’s Fujitsu on

compatible radios.

In August, and following mul-

tiple tests and onboarding pro-

cedures, DISH officially selected

VMware’s Telco Cloud platform to

run as an underlying cloud plat-

form and infrastructure layer. By

using the platform as an abstrac-

tion layer that runs across multi-

ple network domains, DISH said

it can tap into hyperscale public

cloud capacity while maintaining

its core control points.

“VMware software will serve

as a powerful foundation for our

cloud-native, software-defined 5G

network,” Rouanne said. “By bring-

ing together innovations such as the

distributed cloud, edge computing

and network slicing, this software

will help us provide our customers

with customizable, secure solutions

that will be more cost-effective

than legacy, vertically-integrated,

hardware-reliant alternatives.”

Then, in September, following

“months of joint testing,” Nokia and

DISH entered into an agreement in

which Nokia’s cloud-native, stand-

alone 5G core software products

will provide support in a number

of areas including data manage-

ment, device management and in-

tegration services. Bhaskar Gorti,

president of Nokia Software and

Nokia chief digital officer said that

Nokia’s product will deliver near-

zero-touch automation capabilities, Ima

ge c

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of D

ISH


30

high-level operational efficiencies,

scale and performance. Further,

also as part of the deal, Nokia will

deliver additional cloud-native

products that will provide 4G, 5G

standalone and Voice over Wi-Fi ac-

cess to core network functions.

“We’re combining all of these ca-

pabilities to do something very

unique at DISH,” Bye said during

the FCC forum. “I think with this

platform it’s going to unlock a lot of

innovation going forward.”

Aggregating disaggregation

Earlier in this report, we framed

the concerns around the potential

for Open RAN to lower capex but in

exchange for increased costs relat-

ed to system integration. So how are

the major players in the space ad-

dressing this perceived challenge?

Two primary schools of thought

are emerging: operator as integra-

tor, or a third party that serves as

a master integrator to essentially

reaggregate disaggregation. With

an integrated RAN provided by, say,

Nokia, if something goes wrong the

operator calls Nokia. With a disag-

gregated RAN, if an operator has

multiple RAN vendors and some-

thing goes wrong, who do they call?

DISH’s Bye, during his comments

at the FCC event, opted for the op-

erator as integrator route. “Every

network has multiple vendors,” he

said. “There’s no network that is

one vendor; it’s always a combina-

tion of many different vendors and

many, many different partners. In-

tegration is just part of the job we

do. That’s part of what we do as a

network provider. When we look at

O-RAN, there’s really nothing that

makes that any more challenging

than the work that we undertake

every day. The architecture with

O-RAN and an open platform actu-

ally gives us much better transpar-

ency and visibility. It really allows

us to drill in and understand where

those pain points are. I see it as a

tremendous opportunity to inte-

grate more effectively than we’ve

done in the past.”

If we look to Rakuten Mobile, this

was the route followed in construc-

tion of their network. But as it re-

lates to the Rakuten Communica-

tions Platform, the Japanese firm

recently struck a deal with Tech

Mahindra to address the recurring

concern around who handles in-

tegration in an open network. Un-

der the agreement, Tech Mahindra

will provide its technologies and

software capabilities to support

the development and deployment

of mobile networks for global cus-

tomers of RCP. The Indian compa-

ny will also provide managed IT,

security and network services to

Rakuten Mobile, and there are also

plans to designate Tech Mahindra

as an official reseller of RCP.

“This first of its kind collabora-

tion with Rakuten Mobile not only

strengthens our existing partner-

ship with them, but will also en-

able us to drive innovation in the

telecom space, provide enhanced

customer experience and lead the

transformation in mobile network

technology from the forefront,”

said Chander Prakash Gurnani,

managing director and CEO of Tech

Mahindra. Amin called this “the

next step on our journey...We are

proud to be partnering with Tech

Mahindra to offer cloud native

networks to customers around the

world through the Rakuten Com-

munications Platform.”

As part of the deal, Tech Mahin-

dra’s wholly-owned subsidiary

Tech Mahindra Americas has sold

its stake in U.S.-based telecom soft-

ware firm Altiostar Networks for

$45 million to Rakuten’s U.S. sub-

sidiary. In 2018, Tech Mahindra had

acquired a 17.5% stake in Altiostar


31

Networks for $15 million. Altiostar

provides 4G and 5G virtualized

RAN software solutions.

Altiostar Executive Vice Pres-

ident of Strategy and Product

Management Thierry Maupilé dis-

cussed another angle of managing

multi-vendor networks, specifi-

cally how to coordinate software

updates and enable network man-

agement to engage in continuous

integration and continuous devel-

opment. For 5G, this type of DevOps

alignment is necessary to take ad-

vantage of a flexible network in

terms of rapidly developing and de-

ploying new services and features.

“What we are implementing not

with just Rakuten but also with

DISH is definitely CI/CD and

DevOps,” Maupile said in an inter-

view. “It’s something very similar to

what has already been implement-

ed by the hyperscalers. In this con-

text, to make it happen you have to

have proper coordination between

the various partners.”

He continued: “We believe if the

operators want to take full advan-

tage of this cloud-native model,

they need to, at some point, have

their own capabilities. Any opera-

tor should define differently what

they need to keep control over. Now

we are giving more control because

it’s an open architecture. They have

more visibility and more control.

But in order to do that and take ad-

vantage of this new control, they

need to have their own capabilities.

Some of them will struggle.”

In a recent partnership announce-

ment, Intel and VMware focused

in on simplifying the integration

piece. They’re working to let ser-

vice providers develop use cases on

top of a vRAN platform by building

programmable, open interfaces us-

ing Intel’s FlexRAN software refer-

ence architecture and VMware’s RIC.

VMware’s Sachin Katti told RCR

Wireless News that the goal of an

expanded collaboration with Intel

is “essentially taking a lot of the

integration risk out of the system

and mak[ing] sure these things

work well before they even hit the

operator. We don’t want the opera-

tors to be nervous about an Open

RAN deployment.”

“We believe if the operators want to take full advantage of this cloud-native model, they need to, at some point, have their own capabilities.”

Thierry Maupilé, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Product Management, Altiostar

“Doing one [Open RAN deployment] is hard but the second one, the third and fourth should not be as difficult.”

Caroline Chan, Vice President and General Manager, 5G Infrastructure Division, Network Platforms Group, Intel


32

Caroline Chan from Intel noted

“quite a bit of friction” in scaling

Open RAN deployments related to

interoperability testing, RAN inte-

gration and integration with telco

clouds. “We’re trying to remove that

by working with VMware. Doing

one [Open RAN deployment] is hard

but the second one, the third and

fourth should not be as difficult.”

In February this year, Deutsche

Telekom announced it was working

with Intel and VMware to test and

validate a vRAN platform that in-

corporates standards developed by

the O-RAN Alliance. Katti said the

new announcement “is expanding

on this partnership and building

on that to really make it a pre-inte-

grated platform. Think of this as a

natural evolution as well as quite a

few new capabilities.”

When does open become closed?

Another question that has been

raised as Open RAN has gained

momentum is where is the line be-

tween an open and closed system?

As you could imagine, vendors that

sell integrated RAN while also fa-

cilitating open interfaces have a

slightly different take than smaller

players that work in specific niches

of the RAN.

In a discussion around what marks

an Open RAN deployment — O-RAN

Alliance interface specifications

and software running on kit from

a single vendor or full modularity

of hardware and software compo-

nents — Nokia’s Tommi Uitto, presi-

dent of mobile networks, said, “You

can build Open RAN with bare met-

al and with vRAN or cloud RAN.

You can build vRAN or cloud RAN

which is O-RAN-compliant or not

O-RAN-compliant…If an operator

wants to buy hardware from a third

party, then they can do so and they

can put our cloud RAN software to

run on top of it. Our policy in cloud

RAN is that we have a full stack if

somebody wants it.”

Corporate CTO and President of

Nokia Bell Labs Marcus Weldon,

speaking during a webinar, laid out

four options that represent differ-

ent degrees of openness and inte-

gration–platform component mi-

croservices, dynamic web services,

bespoke platform services and

guaranteed performance systems.

“Not all openness is good and not

all closed-ness is good,” he said.

“And equally, not always is it nec-

essary to be highly integrated and

in many cases it’s good to be more

loosely integrated and dynamically

interworked. Maybe where we

should be aiming…is somewhere

in the middle.” Weldon said all four

are valid models and that many

high-performance telecom systems

sit in the top left quadrant. “I think

of this as open and integrated,” in

that integrated modules are con-

nected to one another via open

interfaces. As operators strategize

in an effort “to find the bullseye

in the middle” Weldon’s advice is

to “integrate what you have to and

open what you can.”

O’Donnell of Viavi said it’s im-

portant, in Open RAN, “that it can

“Integrate what you have to and open what you can.”

Marcus Weldon, Corporate CTO, Nokia and President of Nokia Bell Labs

https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/vmware-and-deutsche-telekom-unveil-collaboration-on-cloud-based-open-and-intelligent-virtual-ran-platform-595354

https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/vmware-and-deutsche-telekom-unveil-collaboration-on-cloud-based-open-and-intelligent-virtual-ran-platform-595354


33

plug and play with different man-

ufacturers’ products. If you have

products which can communicate

across those interfaces then, to

me, that’s open. But you start in-

troducing proprietary signaling on

either of those interfaces then, to

me, that’s closing it in. It’s losing its

openness there. I think it’s import-

ant to keep all of those...aspects

addressed to avoid it becoming a

closed solution.”

Altiostar’s Shabbir Bagasrawala

also falls on the side of open and

modular as essential to Open RAN.

“Open is probably, from my per-

spective, the fact that we’re creat-

ing a modular RAN. There’s multi-

ple reasons why there’s this drive

for modularity. I think there’s an

industry-wide recognition of the

need for supply chain diversity.”

Another angle that becomes appar-

ent post-sales, Bagasrawala said,

is the ability to pull out one mod-

ular piece of the RAN and put in

something different. “My concept

of open is…how can you take one

module and replace it with another.

That’s what I classify as open.”

During a panel at the FCC’s Open

RAN virtual session , Weldon con-

tinued to build on the narrative

of open and integrated. Mavenir’s

John Baker, senior vice president

of business development, jumped

in following comments form AT&T:

“Mavenir is waiting for the oppor-

tunity. When AT&T starts the pro-

cess, we’re willing and able and I

throw that out also to Marcus about

this interoperability testing. We

believe interoperability is key to

the success of this marketplace...So,

Marcus, we’re ready and waiting for

the Nokia radio. I think there’s a lot

of discussion about Open RAN but

proof is in the eating as they say.”

So is Open RAN ready for primetime?

Given that the interest in 5G and

the security of telecom systems

both produced and deployed in the

U.S. and globally reaches the high-

est level of government, it reason-

ably follows that there’s some dis-

crepancy in opinion. While some

officials seem bullish on Open RAN

as a vector of disruption, that’s a

not a uniform position. U.S. Attor-

ney General William Barr made his

stance crystal clear back in Feb-

ruary: “Recently there has been

some talk about trying to develop

an Open RAN approach, which

aims to force open the RAN into its

components and have those com-

ponents be developed by U.S. or

Western innovators. The problem

is that this is pie in the sky. This

approach is completely untested

and would take many years to get

off the ground, and it would not be

ready for primetime for a decade,

if ever. What we need today, as I

said, was a product that can win

Ima

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34

contracts right now, a proven in-

frastructure, one that will blunt

Huawei’s advance.”

Rakuten Mobile and DISH obvi-

ously don’t agree with that position

given the focus of their invest-

ments. Nor do other players in the

Open RAN ecosystem.

CommScope’s Matt Melester is

looking at a multi-year timeline for

Open RAN at scale. “Three years, we

think, is probably the earliest we

think we’ll see it take off and scale.

We’re doing things that are just more

in terms of research as opposed to

product development – being at a

position in that point in time where

we would have our options open.

The focus is to work with the OEM

community on those solutions.”

O’Donnell pointed to the quick

growth of the O-RAN Alliance as a

proof point. “I’m very much of the

opinion that it’s not over-hyped.”

Shenbagaraman pointed to Open

RAN as part of the larger move

toward virtualization and com-

moditization of hardware. “I think

there’s going to be a lot more in-

novation made possible with this

underlying disaggregated architec-

ture and there’s going to be disrup-

tion. The trend has already start-

ed...There is a reconfiguration that

is happening. The realignment will

mean there’s a complete hardware/

software decoupling. That will be-

come the norm.”

Beyond Open RAN

Continuing this trend of disaggre-

gation, virtualization and commod-

itization has implications beyond

just Open RAN. 5G was intentionally

designed to be flexible and adapt-

able. As such, the networks have to

mirror that as does the way services

are developed and deployed.

“If you really want to deliver the

promise of 5G and multiple use cas-

es, to make sure you can satisfy use

cases with very different require-

ments, you need to have two things

happening in the network,” Maupilé

said. “Great flexibility in how you

are going to deploy different net-

work functions...You can put those

network elements wherever you

want.” And, “The network has to be-

come a platform and the platform

has to expose the APIs that have

never been exposed before. The eco-

system which is going to sit above

is more aligned with different ver-

ticals — healthcare or retail or auto-

motive or manufacturing — so you

can write applications on this net-

work for a particular use case.”

Rabinovitsj from Facebook Con-

nectivity also called out two key

points at the intersection of 5G and

Open RAN: the focus on driving

down TCO for the entire telecom

stack, and allowing operators to

build the engineering muscles nec-

essary to deliver new, value-added

services. The industry should use

this moment “to reshape the way

the networks operate and the way

they’re deployed. Use this 5G mo-

ment to just completely change all

the ways they’ve been building out

and deploying networks. There is

this potential now with the way the

RAN is architected. We have this

ability to move more and more of

this processing closer to the edge of

the network. There’s a real advan-

tage to that in terms of developing

very specific services.”

Shenbagaraman also picked up on

moving intelligence to the network

edge in service of deployment and

service flexibility, but said there’s

still work to be done to realize this.

“It is something that’s still evolving

– how to enable this. The talk about

hosting services closer to the edge

has been around and a lot of play-

ers have emerged. What is not there

yet, I would say, is crystallization in

terms of the standard, templatized


35

architectures that can serve for

different use cases. There seems to

be any number of ways to achieve

the same solution. There’s too much

fluidity today about how to address

those edge use cases but some pat-

terns are emerging.”

He further highlighted the impor-

tance of making the involved tech-

nologies easy to consume, which

harkens back to the key role of

system integration. “There has to

be a level of simplification. The key

thing here is making it more robust

in terms of managing the solution.”

“Edge computing and the

applications people are excited

about with edge computing are

kind of the end goal here,” Katti

explained. “We want to bring the

cloud to the RAN…with the goal

that eventually applications can

leverage the cloud all the way to

the edge to run things you can-

not do today. Apart from having

a cloud platform that you can run

these cloud applications on at the

edge, the other thing we’re focusing

on is these applications don’t just sit

alongside the RAN; they can inter-

act with the RAN.”

In previous conversation, Chan

has characterized 5G, AI and edge

compute all as key to digital trans-

formation. “I really see 5G con-

nectivity as an enabler but edge

compute and AI is really the angle

for the operator to have that ROI.

Everything that we’re building has

the compute capability, has the

storage capability.”

Beyond Open RAN, Amin is fo-

cused on network automation which

he called the “main scale differenti-

ator.” He sketched out Rakuten Mo-

bile’s roadmap: process automation,

cognitive process automation, intro-

duction of virtual agents and analyt-

ics, and AI/ML-based execution.

“This is not a whitepaper,” he said

during a webinar presentation. “This

is within grasp.” But to achieve the

goals of network self-management

and healing, “collaboration and

ecosystem” are imperative. “What

happens if entire telco networks be-

come commoditized? The functions

and the application onboarding

becomes easier. The advancements

that happen in software and the ex-

citement we have about Open RAN

is not just simply and purely about

the fact that I’m just opening the [ra-

dio] interfaces. It’s about the future

possibilities when these networks

become fully autonomous.”

“There has to be a level of simplification. The key thing here is making it more robust in terms of managing the solution.”

Ganesh Shenbagaraman, Vice President of Engineering, Radisys Editor’s note: Discussing Open RAN

in a vacuum is near-impossible given the massive technological confluence encompassed by 5G. Attendant technology sets like mobile edge computing, distribution of core functionality, artificial intelligence and machine learning, closed-loop analytics, spectral variation and more, are all part of this conversation. Given the constraints of this format, we’ve attempted to focus on Open RAN while providing a broader context of how it touches other aspects of a 5G network. Please read previous reports and look for upcoming content that will continue this important and complex discussion. RCR Wireless News editors Catherine Sbeglia and Juan Pedro Tomas contributed to this report.

36

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VIAVI SolutionsVIAVI is a global provider of network test, monitoring and assurance solutions for communications service providers, enterprises, network equipment manufacturers, government and avionics.

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