Stay focused to enjoy Open opportunities

The industry needs to be wary of the efforts to shift the focus and redefine Open RAN, and instead pay attention to its basic principles

There has been much debate and misinformation surrounding the concept of Open RAN, with incumbent mobile equipment providers and some media outlets providing negative self-opinionated comments. However, it is important to understand the two main principles of Open RAN. Firstly, Open RAN focuses on open interfaces and interoperability of network elements. Secondly, there is no requirement in any of the specifications on how to build the elements with open interfaces.

The Open RAN community has been very clear about encouraging innovation that allows suppliers to compete globally. It’s also, worth noting that it takes a global community to build a global ecosystem and marketplace; as a result, the two are interdependent.

Open RAN has approximately a 5% share of the market and is growing, which is a significant increase from four years ago.

There has been a lot of discussion on vendor-locked silicon and the type of acceleration that is good or bad, which is crazy, to say the least. One can have a vendor-locked system from an incumbent that uses custom silicon technology with unknown acceleration techniques. This, according to the incumbents, is good for the industry, including from a security perspective being a single point of supply chain failure.

Compare that to a multi-vendor Open RAN solution that may use some common silicon or code that provides diversity in the supply chain – I know what I would recommend.

As to the discussion on software virtualisation being dependent on certain hardware cards, this is no different to the use of different ethernet cards, or different processors and specific acceleration hardware in the mobile Core. The Core is Open, virtualised and has a secure supply chain.

The prime reason for Open RAN was that operators wanted more suppliers and supplier innovation, and we’ve seen so much innovation stemming from new companies focused on Open RAN. The industry is seeing the addition of new end-to-end system suppliers, on top of the traditional vendors, and when large operators get on board, that will start to drive the economies of scale to get chips and technology that are required at competitive pricing.

Costs are tied to scale and that is the big challenge in the Open RAN industry; it’s all about scale. There are also virtualised RAN solutions today without accelerators or that use different accelerator suppliers with more options to come, demonstrating innovation at its best.

Governments on a global basis are looking at the possibility of Open RAN revitalising the local industry. This is great news, but such initiatives can also be harmful in a way, if they lead to producing fragmented product specifications and standards that require local technology as an entry barrier and ultimately drive fragmentation of the village, reducing the scale of the opportunity and reducing cooperation and divergence from the Open RAN principles.

Currently, according to LightCounting Market Research, Open RAN has approximately a 5% share of the market and is growing, which is a significant increase from four years ago. It would be great to see more articles that focus on the principles highlighting the success of the Open RAN ecosystem and the achievements of companies like Intel Corporation, DISH, Rakuten, NEC, Fujitsu, AMD, Qualcomm, Mavenir, among others, and present that as the threat to the incumbents.

“The prime reason for Open RAN was that operators wanted more suppliers and innovation, and we’ve seen so much innovation stemming from new companies.”

In conclusion, Open RAN is about the open interfaces and interoperability of network elements, encouraging innovation and competition globally. It is all about demonstrating interoperability and supply chain diversity, promoting new suppliers and supplier innovation.

So, stay focused on the Open RAN principles, enjoy the opportunity to localise without specification fragmentation and local barriers to entry and we, the village, will all enjoy the benefits of an open future.

By John Baker

John is a Senior Vice President of Ecosystem Business Development at Mavenir

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