In conjunction with a wide swath of industry stakeholders, the United States federal government is working to form and implement the creatively-titled National Strategy to Secure 5G. Signed by President Trump in March, the strategy has three primary goals: “facilitating domestic 5G rollout; assessing...
In previous blogs in this “Who Disaggregated My RAN? series, we have looked at the benefits of a disaggregated Open RAN, including the growth of an ecosystem to support the deployment of an Open RAN. We have also looked at how these disaggregated solutions...
As it continues to gain 5G infrastructure market share, Samsung this week announced a virtualized 5G RAN solution comprising virtualized central and distributed units and updated radios. And in keeping with the RAN vendor trend toward “open,” Samsung said the new vRAN solution will...
History
Functional splits are nothing new. They were initially outlined in 3GPP Release 14 and defined in 3GPP release 15 and where new terminology, interfaces and functional modules were introduced. But why is this RU, DU, CU functional split concept becoming so fundamental in Open...
The virtualization of cellular networks has been ongoing for some time. But virtualizing the Radio Access Network (RAN) has always been an enigma and was the final frontier for the trend. The rising star of 5G infrastructure business—Samsung—jumped on to the virtualized RAN (vRAN)...
Nokia expects “full suite” of O-RAN interfaces available in 2021
Adding on to a recent refresh of its virtualized, cloud-based RAN solutions, Nokia today, after weeks of building up to it, made clear its position on open RAN and its role as a global, incumbent...
In this series focused on the benefits of a disaggregated Open RAN, we have had a chance to see how an open RAN has helped expand the ecosystem and led operators to consider new vendor solutions that meet their needs. Standards have emerged which...
The decision is being seen by some as an attempt to better align itself with Japanese firm Rakuten
Dish Network will use Altiostar’s cloud-native O-RAN compliant solution for its 5G network buildout, providing the carrier with openness, modularity, agility and scalability. The Altiostar solution leverages...
FCC cuts off Universal Service Fund money to buy and maintain US networks that use Chinese kit
It's been a long time coming but, despite the protracted journey, reaching the destination still stings for the small and rural domestic mobile network operators that use network...
History
The entire telecom industry is going through a dramatic change that can be only compared to the change that data centers went through in the 2000s, all driven by Moore’s Law. This is driving the need to move from costly, proprietary RAN solutions to...
Inland using Parallel Wireless RRHs connected to virtualized baseband running on Dell EMC servers
Open radio access network technologies, which disaggregate hardware from software potentially creating a cost benefit to operators, have been discussed as a potential solution for smaller U.S. operators looking to move...
Open RAN, as the name implies, is meant to be open to multiple vendors, both hardware and software, that work together to achieve interoperability in accordance with an operator's needs. But as incumbent radio vendors like Nokia throw out terms like "open but integrated,"...
The arrival of RAN disaggregation and the corresponding standards for open interfaces, hardware, software decoupling, network intelligence and automation has led to the expansion of a diverse ecosystem of RAN component players, specifically Radio Unit (RU) vendors. While this ecosystem allows operators to pick...
In my last article in this “Who Disaggregated My RAN?” blog series, we covered the advances made by the O-RAN Alliance to deliver an open Fronthaul specification that supports multiple ways in which the base station will connect to the radio and ensures interoperability...
Nokia exec says open RAN marked by both merit and hype
Nokia and AT&T today announced a successful trial of a Radio Intelligent Controller (RIC) on the carrier's millimeter wave 5G network in New York City. Nokia's Sandro Tavares, global head of mobile networks marketing,...
As we saw in the last article in this blog series, the disaggregation of the RAN has opened up a number of new and exciting opportunities for a larger ecosystem to grow and thrive. But nowhere has the momentum been felt more than in...
Open RAN vendors organizing to have radios ready to replace rural Huawei kit
The open RAN hits keep on coming with key players Altiostar and Mavenir this morning they will work together with equipment OEMs to develop radio units compatible with the frequency bands used...
New Japanese market entrant Rakuten Mobile, a subsidiary of e-commerce giant Rakuten, is having talks with several governments around the world regarding the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP), Tareq Amin, representative director, EVP and CTO of Rakuten Mobile, said in a recent press conference.
“It’s been...
In my first blog in this new Who Disaggregated My RAN? series, “How it All Falls in Place,” I provided the background that led to the industry’s push for the adoption of an open and disaggregated RAN.
Based on my engagements with the entire ecosystem...
Network operators worldwide are turning to open radio access network (O-RAN) architectures in an effort to simplify 5G RAN deployment and management, allowing more efficient scalability to meet rising data demands. With the recent formation of the Open RAN Policy Coalition, and a liaison...
Open RAN movement latest front in larger geopolitical conflict
With the benefit of hindsight, the 5G New Radio standard was collaboratively developed by organizations like 3GPP with a broad goal of creating a single standard rather than rehashing GSM vs. CMDA or LTE and WiMax....
Disaggregated RAN: How it all falls in place
The promise of 5G is unlocking significant change and sparking the 4th Industrial Revolution, driving use cases such as industrial IoT and improved healthcare, to augmented reality, autonomous vehicles and smart cities. But if 5G is to...
5G is meant to be flexible so its radio access network should be too
Nokia is unique compared to its competitors Ericsson and Huawei in that the company has amped up messaging around open RAN generally and, specifically, its role in balancing open, interoperable interfaces...
As Ansel Adams put it, "There's nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept
The story of open RAN is nuanced. Beyond the formidable technology piece, geopolitics inform how the ecosystem of open RAN proponents are framing the issue, which is becoming increasingly...
Nokia collaborated with other vendors in Rakuten Mobile's network build
Earlier this month the Open RAN Policy Coalition launched with a number of open RAN vendors, naturally, and operator members, including AT&T, DISH, NTT, Telefonica, Verizon and Vodafone. None of the big three RAN vendors--Ericsson,...
