OpenRAN – Haphazard jigsaw

The OpenRAN pieces may not fit together very well.

• Vodafone is launching OpenRAN on its network in what looks like an experiment to test whether or not OpenRAN can fulfill any of the promises that its proponents have so often made.
• I suspect that it is going to struggle to do so.
• OpenRAN is an industry movement to make the components of the mobile networks completely interoperable thereby opening the market to smaller vendors and increasing the choice for mobile operators.
• This should increase competition and lower the overall cost of building mobile networks.
• However, as always with these sorts of initiatives, the devil is in the detail which reveals that OpenRAN may end up being just as proprietary as the current systems creating more problems that it solves.
• My colleague John Strand over at Strand Consult makes a few initial points on OpenRAN which call into question the ideal to which it is currently being held.
• Some of these are:
  • First, standard: OpenRAN is not a standard and the O-RAN alliance is a private organisation that does not produce standards but fosters cooperation between industry players.
  • This means that there is nothing to prevent anyone from adding tweaks and changes that suit their particular deployment as has often happened in the past.
  • This means that to keep interoperability, every piece of equipment will need to be tested to ensure interoperability with every other piece of equipment creating a large and probably expensive testing regime when deploying an OpenRAN network.
  • Rakuten appears to have got around this problem by deploying a series of proprietary solutions that may have effectively just created another proprietary implementation that will not solve any of the perceived problems with the current status quo (see here).
  • Second, maturity: By its own admission (see here), OpenRAN 5G will not be ready for mass deployment until 2025.
  • This is a problem as operators are rolling out 5G in volume in 2021 and will continue to do so going forward.
  • This means that by the time OpenRAN is ready, a large number of networks will have already completed or be in the process of rolling it out.
  • Hence, regardless of any other issues, OpenRAN may well have already missed most of the party.
  • Third, China. OpenRAN is also being seen as a good way to replace the presence of Chinese companies in the mobile networks of non-Chinese countries.
  • However, Chinese vendors and operators are already deeply involved in the OpenRAN Alliance (see here) many of which are state-owned and may be affiliated with the Chinese military.
  • Hence, using OpenRAN to remove Chinese influence and technology from one’s network could end up being more difficult than it sounds and may lead to proprietary solutions like Rakuten’s.
• The biggest problem that I see here is interoperability because, without the ability to mix and match whatever components one wants with no impact on performance, OpenRAN offers no improvement than the proprietary offerings of Nokia, Ericsson, or Huawei.
• It may even end up being worse as the scale, performance, and support benefits one gets from the larger players may not be guaranteed.
• Hence, I think that the jury is out on the viability of OpenRAN which means that Vodafone’s deployment of 2500 cell sites in Wales and the South West of the UK is an experiment to see if it can compete with the big players.
• Vodafone is using Samsung, NEC, Dell, Wind River, Capgemini, and Keysight Technologies to cobble together this experiment which already seems to have many moving parts.
• OpenRAN has certainly got the existing players such as Nokia and Ericsson on their toes, but I do not see anything here yet that would lead me to believe that there is an imminent threat.
• Hence, I think the outlook remains bright for both of these players of which I prefer Nokia as it is in the middle of a turnaround and has scope to gain the most share from Huawei’s withdrawal.
• I have a position in Nokia and am very comfortable sticking with it until at least €6.