Clouds will open with good prospects for RAN
Open RAN is progressing faster than any new technology ever introduced into the telecoms ecosystem, creating more flexibility and capacity for us all the benefit from, NEC’s 5G product management VP, Patrick Lopez, has told Mobile Europe. Europe is generally making good progress, Lopez reported, but there is a lot we can learn from NTT Docomo and Rakuten in Japan.
“We’re starting to see some excellent traction in the market. We’re working with several European operators on Open RAN deployments,” said Lopez. NEC Open Networks is working With Telefónica on a 800-site pilot across Spain, Germany, UK and Brazil. It is also in a partnership with Vodafone in the UK to supply 5G massive MIMO radio units for the operator’s initiative to build one of the largest commercial Open RANs in the world. Meanwhile, it is heavily involved with Deutsche Telekom on the German telco’s O-RAN Town initiative.
However, there is still a massive complexity mountain to climb before all the benefits can be enjoyed. We are still at a stage where all the ingredients that make a fine wine are crowding each other out. The full flavours of all the subtle infusion will be enjoyed when networking becomes transformed by a new energy, the cloud.
While most networks are transitioning towards a cloud-based operation, the snag is that there is a conjunction of different developments taking place simultaneously, which challenges operators to decide what should be prioritised, said Lopez. To do this properly, operators need to ‘cloudify’ their network, introduce virtual infrastructure management and then manage their network functions with rigid modularity. All of which is possible with container techniques. But there are decisions that need to be made.
“[Operators] need to determine what kind of services and functions [they] want to bring forward,” said Lopez. Open RAN is not the only option. Many operators are interested in network slicing, for example, so that forces them to ‘taste’ all the flavours simultaneously. Which pushes them into some choices which are difficult to make in haste. “It becomes a matter of what’s most urgent, what work is required and where the dependencies lie,” said Lopez.
Brownfield operators have to make a different type compromise when integrating new technology with their existing environment. That’s even more complex, since it involves discarding options that operators would ideally use. Despite that Lopez said, “We’ve seen excellent progress. Most tier one operators are committing to Open RAN, but they are all at different places in this journey.”
The biggest problem, ironically, is Open RAN’s flexibility. Lack of choice can be liberating, and, by contrast, Open RAN is giving operators a lot to think about. Operators have a different attitude towards Open RAN regarding how they want to consume it. “Some want to be in complete control over the network, to select the vendors, the use case and the product versions and assemble and operate that themselves,” said Lopez.
That only works if there is a robust system integration discipline in-house. It could work if mobile operators have the organisational structures and processes to take full advantage of that capability. If that were the case nobody would ever have bought proprietary technology.
“With traditional technology and vendors, there wasn’t that much choice. You used what you bought for everything; for urban environments, rural environments, highways, stadiums…and everybody had the same connectivity everywhere, all the time. 5G is different because it creates different connectivity products for other use cases. Open RAN immediately brings to the table the flexibility needed to achieve this,” said Lopez. “Operators need to think carefully about how they want to use it.”
“So my best advice to operators is that they need to get comfortable with starting their Open RAN journey as early as possible, even on a small scale. Because the sooner they realize the maturity and capacity of the technology, the sooner you can use that in your planning for your network growth.”