Congress Hopes to Give O-RAN a Push, Say Walden, Matsui

“A robust market of trusted vendors for network infrastructure, particularly for the radio access network, is crucial to ensuring that providers, large and small, have access to new innovative technologies … at an affordable price,” Walden said. By offering nearly free equipment, Huawei and ZTE “made it difficult for trusted vendors to compete in the marketplace,” he said.

“Innovation is pushing the market to move toward a more competitive marketplace,” Walden said. “In an open system, trusted vendors would be able to compete for contracts across an array of infrastructure items on a provider’s network.” Buying hardware and software from different vendors “will reduce costs for network operators and present greater opportunity to equipment vendors,” he said. Today, carriers have to rip and replace equipment to upgrade and secure their networks, he said: “This is an expensive and timely task for even the largest providers and an almost impossible task for small" ones.

“We will need a consistent and concerted effort,” Matsui said. Education is critical, she said. “While many congressional offices are familiar with these issues generally, we have a lot of work ahead of us to ensure that members and their staff understand open-RAN and recognize its value,” she said: “One doesn’t need to be a telecommunications expert to understand that moving away from closed, proprietary solutions will create an opportunity for a new supply chain ecosystem to flourish.” S-3189 language was included in “must-pass” legislation in the Senate, and she will push for the same in the House, Matsui said.

More than 25 operators and 150 companies are focused on the O-RAN, said John Baker, Mavenir senior vice president-business development. “Virtualization software is the way to go forward to the extent that the RAN now consists of a radio unit on the tower and then the rest … is software virtualized on standard, off-the-shelf server technologies.”

The O-RAN interface specification came out a year ago and radios are coming to market with the interface built in, Baker said. “Even commercial networks are now being deployed with those interfaces,” he said. “The future is bright,” but the speed of the deployment depends on interoperability, he said. Some projections are that in four years, 10% of networks will be open-RAN.

The $750 million proposed by Congress probably isn’t enough to really give O-RAN a push, said Brian Hendricks, Nokia Americas vice president-policy and public affairs. Policy is as important as R&D, he said: “Any new participants” will face "a very, very well-financed set of competitors from China” offering “below-cost, below-market financing, deferred payment terms,” he said: “Those are things that are going to be major headwinds.” Smaller operators face challenges trying to deploy an open network, he said: “They may need help.”

Consumers have to benefit, Baker said. “It’s not just a science exercise,” he said: “It’s an exercise in getting costs out of network and allowing mobile customers to have a better service at a low price … or more features that will give better technology usages.”

“If you standardize the interfaces at the sub-component level in the RAN, you will drive competition, which leads to innovation, which leads to a more robust and diverse supply chain,” said Diane Rinaldo, executive director of the coalition.