Open RAN technology is proven and operators are committed, but the lingering questions around integration costs and lifecycle management in a multi-vendor network remain
A panel comprising a leading Open RAN vendor, a leading Open RAN test firm, and a major global operator dissected the next phase of disaggregated radio during a recent virtual forum, available on demand here. The headline is that Open RAN is technologically feasible and global interest is obvious; but, looking beyond simply building and commissioning an Open RAN network, longer-term considerations focused on total cost of ownership (TCO) and how to effectively manage a multi-vendor system over the entire lifecycle of the technologies need to be sorted for this new architecture to rapidly scale.
Wind River’s Prakash Desai, senior director of product management for intelligent cloud, highlighted ongoing global commitments and deployments of Open RAN by Tier 1 CSPs, concluding that, “Open RAN as a technology is proven beyond doubt.” That said, “The journey has just begun.” He called out interoperability and TCO as areas “that need some work…I think to sum it up a lot of momentum, a lot of ecosystem expansion, the timing is right, the technology is proven. I think we should see some commercialization take up in the next couple years.”
From the test perspective, Spirent Vice President Anil Kollipara said the industry has done a “great job” getting Open RAN into the “early market phase.” The technology, he said, is valuable and feasible, and supported by a robust and growing ecosystem of vendors. “If you look at where we are now, we are facing the mainstream, the industrialization aspect of it. The biggest challenge we have is the chasm in front of us. What worked for us until now is not going to work for us going forward.” Now, he said, it’s about aligning metrics with the real-world needs of operators, namely performance parity versus integrated RAN and TCO. “Those are the things we’re going to focus on. Industrialization is the most important aspect to achieve those types of metrics.”
Automation is key to scaling Open RAN
Saurabh Mittal, vice president of networks for Bharti Airtel, gave the operator perspective. He outlined challenges associated with evaluating technologies from a bigger, and still growing, pool of vendors, delegating out system integration responsibilities (in-house or prime vendor), and scalability. For context, he said when Airtel was in the midst of deploying 5G, they were lighting up 1,000 sites per day. And, of course, Mittal said this all needs to align with Airtel’s, and most other operators’, primary objectives of “brilliant” customer experience and optimal cost efficiency. “The Open RAN technology has to enable deliveries on the north stars.”
Kollipara described a give-and-take in terms of the opportunities presented by Open RAN of mixing and matching hardware and software, and the cost associated with the requisite integration. “The premise of Open RAN has been to avoid vendor lock-in. That was one of the founding principles…So having all these different suppliers, this is great, this is addressing that very specific aspect of it. But it does introduce a lot of challenges.” Putting a figure to it, he said Open RAN, as compared to traditional RAN, increases complexity “100x or more…The only way you can address that is through a complete lifecycle management, through a complete automation approach, where all the changes…that are coming in from any part of the ecosystem go through a complete testing cycle…Having the lifecycle management approach as the only approach to manage this operational complexity is a must, and that’s where you’ll see the ROI and TCO get kind of controlled and addressed.”
Bottomline, does Open RAN bring TCO savings over its lifecycle? “That’s the million, or more, dollar question,” Desai said. Given that the price/performance comparison is against established, hardened integrated RAN, the bar is set quite high, he said. Standardization is key, and not just for open radio interfaces but also for SMO frameworks meaning, “We need full-stack, integrated blueprints from infra to cloud to applications.” And, “I think automation is the key.” Recalling Mittal’s example of commissioning 1,000 sites per day, “There is no way we can have that done manually. Automation is the key.”
For more from the Open RAN Global Forum, read the following:
