As Open RAN matures and scales, Mavenir shines a light on the distinction between interoperable, multi-vendor radio systems, and using advanced RAN to deliver innovation
The Telecom Infra Project’s marquee event, Fyuz, serves as an anchor point in the ongoing industry conversation around the benefits, both technological and economic, that Open RAN can deliver. A major theme at the show this year, which opened with the announcement that Ericsson is “committed” to open interfaces in disaggregated radio systems, was the industrialization of Open RAN; based on conversations on the main stage, expo floor and sidelines of the event, it’s clear that attention is turning from proving interoperability in multi-vendor Open RAN solutions, to deploying those solutions at scale and layering in additional cloud-enabled automation features.
RCR Wireless News caught up with Mavenir SVP of Business Development John Baker during Fyuz to better understand this link between Open RAN and innovation, in the context of the former merely describing standardized, open interfaces between RAN elements and the latter focused more on how these new architectures are leveraged by operators in the real world.
Open RAN, Baker said, is “just the interfaces and how two products can plug and play…The innovation then goes into how you build the product. And personally, I don’t believe anybody should be specifying how you build those products…At the end of the day, the innovation is where companies will differentiate themselves. And Mavenir has done that over the years in terms of innovation with software and the ability to replace hardware blocks with software…And now we’re seeing that in the RAN.”
Watch the full video interview with Baker below.
And for a deeper dive into market dynamics shaping Open RAN, check out this interview with Baker’s colleague Antonio Correa, Senior RVP Southern Europe, Caribbean & Latin America.
How will buy-in from incumbent vendors impact Open RAN market dynamics?
As mentioned, during Fyuz Ericsson discussed its commitment to Open RAN; similarly, Fyuz 2022 kicked off with a similar talking point from Nokia. Baker continues to educate the industry, regulators and other stakeholders as to the important distinctions between Open RAN, cloud RAN and virtual RAN.
1) “Open RAN” is not a technology
a. Open RAN is the policy principle of using open interface specifications to ensure vendor interoperability
b. Unless you can demonstrate interoperability across specified interfaces you do NOT have Open RAN
c. Open RAN solutions can be built with both hardware and virtualized in software.
2) “Open vRAN”
a. Open vRAN as with the majority of the RAN components built-in software on a virtualized platform using disaggregated components verified and tested against Open Specified vendor interoperable interfaces
b. vRAN, unless it is stated as O-vRAN or Open vRAN is a proprietary implementation
3) Cloud RAN
a. “Open Cloud RAN” is an architecture of deploying a vRAN solution with Open and demonstrated interoperable interfaces.
b. “Closed Cloud RAN” is an architecture of deploying a vRAN solution where vendor interoperability of specified interfaces cannot be demonstrated.
With that, back to Baker at Fyuz: “We’ve seen a lot of announcements with Ericsson in the last week or so about joining the Oen RAN club. We talk a bit about what that means. I think theres still a lot of people questioning Open RAN, to be honest. The questioning should really be stopped. We’re now focused on how do we scale the industry? It’s a technology change, and a business change in the industry.”
Baker highlights that among the core precepts of Open RAN is the idea that fostering a diverse supplier ecosystem will spur competition resulting in better economics for operators, not to mention the link between competition and innovation. But he did strike a cautionary note around vendors expressing support for Open RAN while still not proving out, or even seeking out, opportunities to interoperate with other vendors’ solutions.
“If they’re in the Open RAN community, they should play the Open RAN game and build products to the right interface specs,” Baker said. “As soon as you’ve got one vendor saying, ‘I’m going to be a single Open RAN vendor,’ then that’s not Open RAN…It’s down to the operators to hold people’s feet to the fire.”
Big picture, Baker said, “I think Open RAN is happening. Open RAN is scaling albeit slowly…The whole ecosystem has changed overnight with these Open RAN deployments that have gone on…Open RAN is here to stay.”
