After attending MWC 2022, Raj Yavatkar, CTO of Juniper Networks, felt increasingly optimistic about the Open RAN architecture and saw huge opportunities.
He spoke to a number of operators at the MWC, particularly in Europe, which said they plan to launch an Open RAN field trial this year with a view to commercial deployment starting in 2023.
"It's not a question of whether it will happen or not, it's a question of when Open RAN will be implemented." He said in a telephone interview with SDxCentral.
The decoupling and open interface approach to RAN faces many challenges and risks, but there are also some developments that fuel Raj Yavatkar's optimism. Companies like Juniper have a lot of influence in the O-RAN Alliance, he said, and discussions with operators are increasingly shifting from theory to application, trial and test.
Raj Yavatkar also believes that more operators will require future RAN contracts to be distributed across multiple suppliers, especially if not allowing one supplier to provide all the RU, DU and CU.
"Telecom operators are trying to become tech companies." He said. "They're seeing how hyperscale (Internet) businesses are expanding more and more into their space through the home region, and they're scaling back the last mile between hyperscale businesses and end users and enterprises, which is where telecom operators are being squeezed out."
In fact, telecom operators are reluctant to act as just basic network connectivity providers, seeing Open RAN as one of the few tools that can avoid this outcome.
Juniper CTO encourages operators to "take a stand"
"I keep telling my telecom operator friends that they have to take a stand." Raj Yavatkar said. Unless operators, hardware vendors, and software vendors come together to build a robust Open RAN ecosystem, traditional incumbent giants will win this race against disruption.
According to him, this tension has also emerged in the O-RAN alliance. For example, Nokia wants to change the 7.2 split of the fronthaul between DU and RU in the O-RAN Alliance canonical standard, as it wants to continue to sell more vertically integrated parts.
"Traditional vendors like Nokia and Ericsson have provided a lot of lip service to Open RAN. In the process, they say that everything (components) will come from them, but the product will be based on the Open RAN interface. "But that goes against the original intent, because then you're not creating a broader ecosystem of players who offer different components based on open, interoperable interfaces." ”
Open RAN is at risk
That's the risk, he says. Established vendors such as Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung can claim compatibility with Open RAN, but still require carriers to use their vertical stacks. Integration and interoperability between different services, products, and vendors remains a key sticking point for Open RAN.
Still, Raj Yavatkar said he doesn't see any indication that Open RAN will be controlled by a handful of vendors, and if so, it would be a repetition of what is happening in the entire RAN market now. The number and scale of vendors targeting Open RAN led him to believe that more players would be able to get a piece of the action.
According to Raj Yavatkar, consolidation will continue and start smaller with some smaller radio and software vendors. He declined to comment on Juniper's willingness to take over in this regard.
Meanwhile, Juniper recently expanded its partnership with Intel, which announced plans to integrate its RAN Smart Controller (RIC) with Intel's FlexRAN platform six months ago for Open RAN development. Juniper's RIC follows the direction of the O-RAN Alliance and sticks to open interfaces and APIs, but the specific features it adds at the top are proprietary.
The company entered the RAN space in 2021 through a licensing agreement signed with Netsia, a subsidiary of Turk Telecom, which gave Juniper exclusive rights to its RIC source code and patents. Juniper intends to differentiate its RICs by pre-integrating and validating the technology so that operators can adopt it as part of a more comprehensive offering that combines with other services.
Juniper also partnered with Intel and Rakuten Symphony to develop edge computing devices in late 2021 to simplify cellular base station deployments in Open RAN environments. The Symware appliance is powered by containerized cellular base station routing and integrated DU on single-rack generic servers. (C114 Ace)