Open RAN standards help create a level playing field, but there has to be room for innovation
The world of telecoms is, among many other things, an exercise in developing and implementing technologies that have been standardized via a regimented, consensus-driven process. A reductive example—without standards, a handset sold into the U.S. market may not function on a European network due to fundamental incongruities in things like band support, duplexing techniques, positioning protocols, and a whole host of other variables. But beyond creating global alignment, standards support scaled business models which is of particular importance given the high barrier to entry associated with many telecoms segments. There is a balancing act to be struck, however, wherein standards create a level playing field, both technologically and from a business perspective, while also leaving room for innovators to innovate. Given the current industry focus on Open RAN as an important vector for operator innovation, RCR Wireless News delved into the balancing act between setting standards, fostering a vibrant business ecosystem and allowing for innovation at the recent Open RAN Global Forum, available on-demand here.
Adrian Scrase, the CTO of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), tied together the role of standards, one of the core premises of Open RAN—interoperability between different radio system components that would allow operators to mix and match pieces of a solution, and the business model. Standardization, he said, allows market “entrants to product products and put those products to market. Equally as important, it creates an economy of scale and, as time goes by, cost is so important and we cannot afford to have fragmented standard systems where you have to invest in multiple threads…But there is also a byproduct, which I think is equally important because it’s not just the standards themselves, but the process of producing those standards that really enables you to create a community of interest.”
The idea of a level playing field is a bit of a hot topic in the Open RAN world. If you trace the history of radio system disaggregation, the mix and match angle has always been central to the value proposition; also central to the value proposition is radio supplier diversification, itself a way to (in theory) help drive innovation and a more competitive business environment, both things beneficial to operators. But because RAN is a scale business, as is the all-important semiconductor firms that make radio systems work, it’s difficult for small firms to compete against large firms on pricing.
Picocom Chief Solutions Architect Doug Pulley pushed backed on the idea that standardization facilitates an “opening of the market…It’s more a case of it’s essential to promote that and the innovation and the lower costs in this domain. So it’s a necessity; it’s not a nice to have.” In the case of radio access networks, he sees challenges around developing practical architectures and implementations given the variability of where functions are placed in a network and how data is transported between them, not to mention antenna volumes, band combinations, channel bandwidths and other pieces.
“So there’s a huge number of variables there,” Pulley continued, “and particularly with disaggregation of the locations of functions, we can’t leave it all up in the air as to what people really want because semiconductors is a very, very expensive business and is critically reliant on economies of scale to be able to deliver end products and useful and sensible prices.”
Pulley hits on two important points around delivering solutions to operators at a competitive price point. At the recent Telecom Infra Project FYUZ event in Madrid, Spain, there was discussion about how can smaller Open RAN suppliers compete--thereby fulfilling the stated goal of supplier diversification–when they’re paying higher prices for chips than the Nokias and Ericssons of the world. In terms of delivering end products, there’s a tension between the innate flexibility and modularity of Open RAN with setting a sort of cap on combinations so interoperability testing and verification can go forward at pace.
To the innovation piece, Pulled said, “We can only innovate and produce that well-optimized and flexible silicon to meet the practical combinations of all the variables…and do it with low cost and power if there are clear bounds one hat we’re designing for, and there’s agreement that everybody subscribes to those clear bounds.”
Scrase weighed in on the innovation piece, noting it is not “the role of standards…to ensure that all products are built the same…Standards have two dimensions. They have breadth and they have depth and good standards go deep enough to make sure that you have interoperability, but they don’t go so deep as to stifle innovation. And getting that balance is incredibly important because what we don’t want to do is to hamper industry, tie them to a standard that’s so specific that every product you go buy will look and feel the same. That’s absolutely not what we’re trying to achieve.”
The role of TIP in getting Open RAN deployment ready
TIP has been around since 2016 and was designed with the idea of taking learnings from the data center space in terms of reducing cost through disaggregated design and applying it to telecom networks (and other connectivity mediums like Wi-FI) to change the cost paradigm. The group is focused on putting together deployment-ready solutions to hasten time to market and time to value. Recently TIP has strengthened its collaboration with the O-RAN Alliance to more rapidly and with less duplication take standards-compliant components, put them into deployment-ready solutions, and run them through a collaborative testing framework.
TIP Chief Marketing Officer Eugina Jordan, who also moderated the panel session with Scrase and Pulley, said standards and solutions “need to be defined on the use cases that operators need because there are some use cases, it’s extremely hard to test and they only can be tested in one vendor’s lab. So bringing even small startups and allowing them to bring the innovation and to get tested…[to] ensure that there’s access to that innovation when tests are happening.”
In terms of turning Open RAN lab work into a scaled field deployment, Rakuten Mobile in Japan is a prime example. After building their own network, Rakuten turned its approach into a product, Rakuten Symphony, that includes everything from turnkey deployment—as it’s doing for 1&1 in Germany—to hardware, software, integration, cloud environment, and other point solutions.
Speaking with media and analysts during the FYUZ event, Rakuten Symphony CEO Tareq Amin said the idea of TIP is quite good. “The problem is the execution from idea into reality…I couldn’t see how to work with TIP to actually build something that is real. In order for you to succeed, there is one ingredient I think no one understood. Vendors need to make money, operators need to make money…You’ve got to show people revenue.”
