New Vodafone white paper suggests multi-vendor integration labs, factory pre-staging, and ongoing network operations
One of the primary criticisms, or opportunities depending on your world view, around multi-vendor, interoperable Open RAN is around added system integration complexity as compared to single-vendor integrated RAN systems. There are vendor-specific solutions to this issue as well as consortia-driven approaches but more needs to be done, according to Vodafone.
In a recently published white paper, the multi-national operator calls for a heightened degree of collaboration between vendors and operators from the test and validation process, onto country-level factory pre-staging, and continuing through network operations after a site is brought live. Given Vodafone’s commitment to continue deploying Open RAN, the question now is how will Open RAN vendor’s react?
Vodafone spells out its vision: “Our proposal for the future model of system integration considers a multivendor distributed and collaborative effort, meaning that instead of each of vendor setting up a centralized lab, our model promotes a coordinated multi-vendor lab network. This network will act as a consortium, delivering the RAN product roadmap under supervision by operator. The operator will govern the testing network, addressing the growing complexity due to massive number of product specifications, suppliers, and
configurations, compared to the traditional system integration model.”
As to what is being done today, we’ll take for an example the Open Testing and Integration Centers (OTICs), run by the standard-setting O-RAN Alliance, with locations in China, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The stated goal: host demonstrations, plugfests and other engagement events; test and verify that equipment meets O-RAN specs; interoperability testing; support integrators; end-to-end “functional and performance” testing; and facilitate feedback and knowledge sharing among the ecosystem.
On the vendor-specific side, Dell Technologies is going hard into Open RAN, and other operator-facing areas, with its Telecom Systems Business. To support this notion of pre-integration and so forth, the company launched the Open Telecom Ecosystem Labs (OTELs) to “accelerate and simplify the creation of an open and modern telecom ecosystem as we validate complex end-to-end technical solutions at speed. But more than this, we empower you to create new business opportunities, with the support of one of the world’s leading enterprise sales teams.”
So there are absolutely efforts to do the pre- part of what Vodafone calls for. Now for the factory staging aspect. Take a firm like WWT which operates an Advanced Technology Center (ATC) that covers the pre-deployment aspects, and also offers supply chain management and system integration services out of four integration centers on three continents.
All that to say, what Vodafone calls for is being done, although perhaps not as focused, distributed or collaborative as an operator of that scale requires to accelerate the whole process and begin to achieve internal efficiencies and, deliver new types of customer-facing outcomes based on the deployment and configuration flexibility Open RAN can deliver.
Back to Vodafone for the call to action: “The purpose of publishing this document is to present the Open RAN future system integration model that Vodafone considers the best option for the industry. We hope that all members of the Open RAN ecosystem will analyze the content of this white paper and work collaboratively, in conversation with each other, to reach practical conclusions on how the model can be successfully implemented. Vodafone remains open to operators and vendors feedback and is willing to reinforce the key importance of vendors aligning their testing and integration efforts in a distributed lab
network, targeted to deliver a pre-integrated Open RAN solution ready for massive rollout.”
