Simplifying Open RAN Deployments at Scale

Session Abstract:

The opportunity to aggregate hardware and software in the mobile network creates an opportunity to leverage open interfaces and is bringing in new participants to the 5G space. The arrival of ORAN technology being deployed by mobile operators is leading to innovation. Both greenfield and brownfield operators as well as private networks are leveraging Open RAN solutions going forward. Watch this session to get the state of play of where these technologies and innovations exist and what to expect for operators. Joining us are Azita Arvani, GM, Americas at Rakuten Symphony and Constantine Polychronopoulos VP of 5G for Juniper Networks.

Executive Speakers:

Constantine Polychronopoulos - Vice President for 5G, Juniper Networks
Azita Arvan - General Manager, Americas, Rakuten Symphony

Transcription

Simplifying Open RAN at Scale

Abe Nejad: The opportunity to aggregate hardware and software, and the mobile network creates an opportunity to leverage open interfaces and is also bringing in new participants to the 5G space. The arrival of ORAN technology being deployed by mobile operators is leading to innovation, both greenfield and brownfield operators, as well as private networks are leveraging open ran solutions going forward. Watch this session to get the state of play of where these technologies and innovations exist and what to expect for operators. Joining us are Azita Arvani, she's GM Americas at Rakuten Symphony, and next to her is Constantine Polychronopoulos. He's vice president of 5G at Juniper networks. And welcome.

Both: Thank you for having us.

Abe Nejad: Thanks for being here. We haven't done this in person in a little bit over a year. We've been doing it virtually in the meantime for reasons that we all know. So it's good to see both of you in person and here in Barcelona, by the way.

Constantine: Indeed. Great to see you see MWC become alive again.

Abe Nejad: And it was actually crowded getting in, which is something I haven't seen in a long time.

Constantine: Yeah. Going back to normality maybe. Fingers crossed.

Abe Nejad: Well, when you're happy to see crowds, then, you know, something is going on. Let's get right into it. Azita it'll start with you. Let's talk about the disruption that open ran brings really to the 5g space. Can you kind of set the stage for us?

Azita Arvani: Sure. Abe first of all, this is really a time where open ran shines in the 5g era. Open ran brings. And when I talk about open ran. I'm talking about open ran and cloud-native architecture together. So the overarching term that we use. Open ran brings significantly reduced total cost of ownership. So for us, for example, in Japan, we have experienced 40% less capital expenses and 30% less [01:57 inaudible]. Also in terms of it being a softer powered architecture, it's very flexible, very scalable, and very agile. So you can add on new services. And as you know, in 5g, we were talking about ultra-broadband applications.

We're talking about low latency applications. We're talking about massive IOT applications. All of these things can be added much more easily because it's a more agile environment. Also because it's a cloud-native environment we have all these mobile edges that you could put applications like mec applications, multi-access, edge computing that we've been talking about a lot. We can put that on there as well. Also in terms of market, because it allows that openness, allows more granular innovation so we can have more people participate. And so the ecosystem is much more diverse. And so overall, I think the software-powered architecture helps with accelerating innovation in the architecture and the network. And we can move at the speed of light.

Abe Nejad: Constantine if you want to piggyback, but really the correlation or convergence of open ran 5g in the telco market.

Constantine: Yes. Azita mentioned all the key benefits that Oran, open ran bring to the picture or to the ecosystem. There is a slight difference between open ran and Oran. Think of open ran as the software-ization of the radio. We go from closed appliance based ran to software driven ran. Now Oran brings the standardization of APIs. A new architecture, which is disruptive, that has disaggregation of the radio of the BBU, the radio stack. All of these components now go from appliance to becoming software containerized workloads, running essentially on standard platforms, cloud platforms.

And that's a huge step forward towards enabling now new architectures, new ways of deploying different pieces of the radio stack. Creating different architectures. And the most disruptive part of course, is the radio intelligent controller. So that addresses innovation at the core. It opens up new possibilities for the operators for addressing, of course, as Azita said, TCO is a huge part of the benefit that Oran brings. But in addition to that, of course, now you have new business models that you can bring to bear for operators.

Abe Nejad: We definitely want to get into the Rick a little bit later. Azita I'm going to go back to you. So what is the market maturity or really readiness for open ran, and maybe talk about some of the partnerships that you're involved in as well.

Azita Arvani: Sure. I'd be happy to. So, as I mentioned, when architecture is software base, it can move at speed of flight. And so for us Rakuten mobile Japan that we started back in April of 2020. And since then we have been going really fast. We have a 4g network up, we have a 5g network up. We have over 5 million subscribers running on open run today. We have over 200,000 sales sectors that are running open ran. We have over a thousand mobile edge sites that we have. Not only open ran is showing optimization for cost, which we talked about before, but also for performance as well.

So, our Rakuten Mobile Japan is the best in terms of upload and download speeds in Japan. And also top 10 globally. Now, besides that we have Rakuten Symphony that we announced in August of last year, that we are going global. We're taking on open round platform and solutions globally. And that has been going very well. We have a deep partnership with one on one in Germany to build the first open ran cloud native network in Europe. We are working with Dish to bring the first open ran cloud native network in the US. And we're working with a number of other operators. We have Sim World, which is the evolution of our platform that we have been offering in terms of the cloud. And as you know, we are in Robin booth today. So we just announced that we have acquired Robin for that. We have the optimized network functions that we have acquired Altiostar for that. We have intelligent operations that we have NYW required.

So these are the best of brief components that we have required as part of our Sim World. And I am very proud to announce a partnership in agreement with AT&T on the intelligent operations, which AT&T is now using our site manager, which is a suite inside of Sim World. And they're using it for significantly accelerating the deployment of wire and wireless networks. So there's a lot going on. And we are also working with Sim Wear I should also mention. Sim Wear is a carrier grade platform that we use for modernizing cell sites.

And it's in partnership with Juniper and Intel, and it's a multifunction, edge device that we're using for cell site rather, and also brings server functionality that we could put virtualized DU on it, or any edge applications on there as well. And working with Qualcomm on the massive [07:55 inaudible] solutions also in open ran DU chips and open ran RU chips. So a lot going on, so market is getting, and we are diligently working on that.

Abe Nejad: So it appears Constantine that there is a readiness for open ran and sort of the, everything tangential to that. Talk more about maybe Juniper networks and their partnerships as well.

Constantiine: Yes. happy do so yeah, just want to add to what Azita said, Rakuten of course leads the park. Because as greenfield operator they really push the frontiers of innovation in that respect, and that's great. And everybody's watching you as you know that. Most operators of course are brownfield. They're looking of course to rip the benefits Oran and open ran but they have the legacy that makes things more complicated. So at Juniper, we lead many working groups at Oran, we are the biggest contributor in terms of contributing in the standard and we lead the network slicing task group, for example, both in terms of being the editor, sharing the working group, as well as contributing.

If you look at Oran for example, we have more than 300 operators being part of the standard. So in terms of participation, pretty much every technology company in this space and all major operators are part of the drive to make Oran a reality. Are we there in terms of deployment? Are we [09:48 inaudible] deploy? I mean, Rakuten is an example as Azita said, things are real, are happening. Components of Oran are still in the design phase or in the trial phase, I would say, but we're only about a year, two years away. And if you look at some of the projections that major players in this field, like Telefonica. Enrique Blanco made the state that by 2025, almost half of the radio deployments of telephonic are going to be Oran based. We have similar projections by major leaders in the space from tier one operators. So yes, we are only that far from making it a reality across the board.

Abe Nejad: Constantine I want to stay with you. You mentioned the Rick a little bit earlier. What is the role of the Rick in open ran again, and really can Oran really become a reality without the Rick in your opinion?

Constantine: I have a strong opinion here. I may be wrong. I may be right, but I can tell you Oran happen without the Rick. Just to make it more interesting here. I'll take a very strong position on that simply because we believe in all seriousness, I see the Rick as the actuator of innovation in the radio, it's really, I call it the operating system of the RAN of the radio access network. And what does that mean is that if the Rick plays the role of the operating system equivalent of a server. Now you can focus on applications, building applications on top of the Rick to address energy efficiency, massive [11:34 inaudible] optimization, spectrum optimization in general.

A host of other applications, including all the SON in the center of the CSUN applications self optimizing network type of organizations. We have built Juniper and other ex ups, but our drive is to enable, to design a radio intelligent controller that enables third party application portability by anybody. Because we believe eventually the community will focus on billing applications that bring new levels of optimization, the radio and open up the door for operators as well as private enterprises to create new monetization scenarios and business cases.

Abe Nejad: Azita your perspective on that?

Azita Arvani: Well, I think Rick is very, very important and it brings third party innovation as Constantine was saying, for controlling and optimization of ran. And that's very important. And the standards for Rick are being defined in Oran Alliance. And I just believe that going back to what Constantine said earlier, the components are ready now, people can go now. We have SON that we are partnering with a third party. That's the SON that we're using today. And so there is no reason to really wait for things to go to open run. I mean, things are ready enough that people can start implementing. Of course, as new standards get developed we add on and we improve and operate.

Abe Nejad: Constantine. I want to go back to you. And again, the correlation also with open ran or Oran and private 5g networks, operators, and also the enterprise market.

Constantine: That's a great question.

Abe Nejad: Give us an overview.

Constantine: So one of the big questions that has yet to be settled in the market is private 5g that is going to become, I think, a huge market. No doubt about that. Is it going to happen through the operators with the operators or without the operators? And at Juniper, we are building solutions that will enable operators to offer private 5g solutions through their own infrastructure. And we believe there are many benefits to that model, but there is no question the market is going to also happen with private 5g, stand alone private 5g, directly to the enterprise. And we see several established as well as new entrance focusing on private 5g.

I believe Oran is going to be a key differentiator. Everything we discussed about the benefits of Oran in the telco space is going to be equally important in the enterprise space. Absolutely. And we have certain used cases in healthcare, for example in automated logistics utilities that look forward to utilizing capabilities that Oran brings, including the Rick and some of the specialized use cases. So you can make with the Rick, essentially you can make the network behave in a way that specific use case requirements can be addressed. It's not one size fits all. You can customize the wave and the radio response to the use cases.

Azita Arvani: Just to give you an example of what you were referring to is for example, with customized experiences. The operators can create experiences special for ARVR, that is different than the experiences that other applications require. And that could be for certain enterprises that's what they want, but I want to really emphasize the flexibility and scalability of the software based architecture that allows you to do different kinds of things. So as enterprises are changing their requirements, so there's dynamic requirements. So you can really be able to meet those requirements.

And the fact that the different models that Constantine was talking about, whether it's through operator or directly to the enterprises, those are all possible. It just depends how you want to shape it, because you have the control, your architecture is distributed. You can have edge clouds that are specific for that enterprise and the applications that they use for that enterprise stays in that edge cloud. So all the things that we've been talking about for the last decade is Telco is coming through using these.

Constatine: It really is the software defined the software based architect that makes the difference and enables the innovations that we're discussing. And the use cases that we were discussing earlier are enabled through another disruptive technology called network slicing, which is [16:47 inaudible] in our space. Network slicing cannot happen without the Rick to put it simply or without the Oran. I mean, yes, you can set up network slices manually. But that's not how you utilize your infrastructure in an optimal way. And sometimes you may have to stand up a network slice across your infrastructure dynamically. So these are all enabled through the software centric architecture that Oran brings to the table.

Azita Arvani: And one other thing I wanted to add, this massive automation that's really, really important when it comes to the network slices. This lifecycle management, when do you spin off new slices? When do you get rid of them? How do you monitor that? All of those things using AI models and machine learning models are much, much easier to do than if you are not using the software based architecture. So it's truly important because for us, that layer of intelligent operations that I mentioned to you is super important because it allows network operators to plan build and operate, manage and monitor their networks in an automated fashion. And that really saves a lot on the OPEX and reduces the number of operations staff that you need to have and increases the accuracy of your [18:14 inaudible].

Abe Nejad: You somewhat just answered my next question, but I'm going to go to Constantine and if you want to add anything to it, so what really needs. Let's say we were here this time next year. What should we be discussing as far as Oran and open ran and what needs to happen and in order to accelerate that evolution

Constatine: I think next year this time, I hope we're going to see the realization. We'll have concrete examples and use cases of network slicing, the power of network slicing. How can we support disparate use cases on the same infrastructure and do so in a programmatic way? So when we talk about telco, a large telco. Azita mentioned Rakuten mobile in Japan. And you mentioned tens of thousands of access points, 200,000. That's mind boggling. So how do you bring up a use case that maybe only local in Malia or across Japan and do it in a programmatic way. So I hope next year, we'll be able to come here and say we've done it. And these are the examples.

Azita Arvani: And I would say, we don't have to wait till year. We already have zero touch provisioning. And it's similar that I mentioned to you that the carrier grade platform, open ran platform for South Side, that is zero touch provisioning. And that's available a little bit later this year. So what I would like to see for folks to consider is that not to say, we're not at a point right now to say, oh, open run, let me inquire about it. Let me see what, like, stand back and look down at it, but more like it's here, how do I participate? How do I accelerate my deployment of open run? And whether it's greenfield or brownfield, it really doesn't matter. Even in the brownfield, you can have, let's say you have a new 5g spectrum that you got, you could do open ran for that 5g spectrum, or you have intelligent operations. You want to automate your operations. Even if you are using legacy system, you could start there. So there are plenty, plenty of opportunities. So I think the question now should be not what are the challenges, because those are all being solved, but how do I participate and how do I accelerate my participation, otherwise you'll get left behind?

Constantine: Right. I mean, they have been solved. I was referring mostly to brownfield.

Azita Arvani: Yeah. The brownfield as well.

Constantine: The basic technical problems have been solved. But adoption is the big question, can we have adoption across the industry? Can we standardize on the way we set up a use case, programmatically with zero thoughts, provisioning? So we are not there yet. The other is devices, we want to see devices mature and become available. Because 5g devices that enable that support network slicing are still very limited in the market. So next year this time you'll be able to have hopefully a device that will allow you to do high definition video and also have very reliable voice applications, different slices. So devices are not there yet.

Azita Arvani: You mean devices for 5g? Yeah. Okay. So that's something that's coming and that I agree with you, but just in general, I mean, if you think about, for example, commerce, if somebody was starting a commerce business today, you don't say, oh, should I wait to do e-commerce or not? If you don't do, e-commerce you are left behind. So I feel the same way about open ran and cloud native architecture. If you are not, if you don't have a strategy for it now you are falling behind.

Abe Nejad: Table stakes. Yeah. Interesting. Well, we always try to highlight the synergy between the vendor or solution provider community and the operator community. So that's our intention. So it's good to see these new part partnerships happen and they're actually happening in sort of real time here in Barcelona. But again, good to have Juniper networks on and also with their partner Rakuten Symphony. Also good to see both of you personally.

Constantine: Great to be here. Thank you Abe for hosting us.

Azita: Thank you Abe.

For any inquiries, please email anejad@thenetworkmediagroup.com

Abe NejadMarch 11, 20225G RAN