Federal efforts to drive carrier adoption, open RAN adoption: 5G Americas, ET Telecom

NEW DELHI: Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) technology-driven networks will continue to advance in the industry due to adoption by carriers and federal government initiatives, according to a US telecom industry body.

“We believe that Open RAN networks will continue to advance in the market as standards and specifications continue to mature. There is solid momentum in all areas of Open RAN. Continued advances in Open RAN interfaces, Advances in RAN Intelligent Controllers (RICs) and their adoption by network operators point to a positive future for open RAN approaches,” Chris Pearson, president of 5G Americas, told ETTelecom in an email interview.

Citing the United States as an example, he said government efforts are supporting the continued diversification of 5G equipment suppliers, a goal of the Open RAN movement.

5G Americas members include major carriers and vendors such as AT&T, Ciena, Cisco, Crown Castle, Mavenir, and Nokia.

Open RAN enables the separation of radio networks and allows carriers to mix and match hardware and software from different vendors, leading to ecosystem diversification while preventing vendor lock-in. It is said.

Citing market forecasts, the organization’s paper states in November 2023 that open RAN adoption will gain momentum from 2025 onwards, ultimately resulting in an estimated 1.3 million open RAN cell sites by the end of 2020. He said it is expected that this will happen.

Recently, Indian Department of Telecommunications (DoT) Secretary Neeraj Mittal met with US Vice Presidential Security Advisor Ann Neuberger, resulting in cooperation for interoperability and large-scale deployment of Open RAN products. The envisioned “US-India OpenRAN Acceleration Roadmap” has been announced. .

After talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden, the two countries deepen cooperation by establishing two joint task forces on advanced telecommunications, focusing on research and development of open RAN and 5G/6G technologies. We agreed on that.

Separately, the Biden administration has set aside a $1.5 billion fund called the Wireless Innovation Fund, part of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, to accelerate progress in open RAN.

Two of Europe’s largest gear manufacturers, Ericsson and Nokia, focused on supporting Open RAN last year. Prominent Open RAN vendors include Mavenir, Samsung, Altiostar (a Rakuten Symphony company), and NEC.

In December 2023, Ericsson acquired a five-year open RAN from US telecommunications company AT&T. Then rival Nokia announced that it and Deutsche Telekom (DT) had begun rolling out multivendor Open RAN with Fujitsu in Germany.

AT&T and Ericsson said at the time that AT&T’s spending over the life of the deal could reach about $14 billion. This new network will carry 70% of the carrier’s wireless traffic in the United States by late 2026.

Starting in 2024, AT&T plans to operate a fully integrated open RAN site in partnership with Ericsson and Fujitsu. AT&T plans to expand its OpenRAN deployment in 2025 in collaboration with multiple vendors including Corning Incorporated, Dell Technologies, Fujitsu, and Intel.

“AT&T’s announcement in December of its transition to a near-single-source RAN network was an unfortunate development. As evidenced by the significant increase in RAN market share in recent years, this has not been achieved with our products. “It does not reflect our technological competitiveness,” Pekka Lundmark, Nokia’s president and CEO, said in its latest financial report.

In contrast, an optimistic Ericsson expects the deal with AT&T to be in full swing in the second half of 2024. “The agreement with AT&T provides important evidence of how our technology will be leveraged to advance future network architectures and reduce total costs.” Ericsson President and Chief Executive Officer CEO Borje Ekholm said this during the company’s latest earnings call.

“The big advantage here is that we can deploy more quickly within our capital expenditures, but that really comes from leveraging new technology. We’re introducing new energy-saving features. “We’re introducing multi-band radios, we’re introducing standardized sites. All of this contributes to putting as much capital into production facilities as humanly possible,” Ekholm said. That is Ericsson’s competitive advantage, he said, “and that’s why that contract is so important.”