Open Network Proponents Say ORAN Goals Are Evolving

The U.K. embraced ORAN “from the angle of supplier diversity and addressing what we saw as a national economic security and resilience risk” because of the consolidation of traditional vendors, said Tom Rumbelow, who leads ORAN policy and research at that nation’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).

The U.K. started with early-stage R&D covering everything from power-efficient chips to managing integration with legacy networks, Rumbelow said. The U.K. now has “about a dozen” trials looking at different use cases for ORAN, “whether those are in stadiums or in tourist hot spots or for urban densification.” DSIT sees a lack of information on use cases as one reason ORAN has been slow to deploy, he said, adding the U.K. is conducting a lot of research on ORAN security.

Initially, the U.K. viewed ORAN as “the means to an end” to make networks more secure, Rumbelow said. As 6G looms, the new focus is how ORAN helps to move to integration of satellite and terrestrial communications or to “a network of networks,” connecting networks around the world. ORAN, he said, should make it easier to use AI tools in networks and post-quantum cryptography.

Taiwan, said Tiffany Lin, deputy manager at that nation’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), always supplied technology to legacy vendors and is working with new, smaller vendors targeting ORAN. That’s “a humongous opportunity” for Taiwan, she said.

In 2020, Taiwan built a lab for testing interoperability between network components, believing interoperability was the first challenge that must be tackled, she said. With the lab, Taiwanese vendors don’t have to build testing facilities or go elsewhere for testing.

ITRI is also working with global standards bodies and other nations on ORAN, Lin said. ORAN “is something that we cannot do on our own, obviously, it takes a village.” The lab is open to vendors from abroad, she said.

Traditionally, carriers relied on one or two vendors for their core and radio access networks, said Peter Pacheco, Mitre technical strategist-cellular network technologies, a speaker at the start of day two of the conference.

There was a “deep” reliance on vendors to operate and maintain the network and, and to make that easier, vendors had a lot of control “in terms of what the products looked like, what their features and capabilities were,” Pacheco said.

The new approach, where providers have a lab and invite vendors in to test their gear was “just unheard of -- that never existed before,” Pacheco said. “That is what ORAN is enabling.” Testing is critical, he said. Under ORAN the network radio is broken into pieces. “That brings complexity ... [and] different knobs that you can now turn to make the radio unique to your network.” Every variation must be tested, he said.

Pacheco also said the presence of government officials from around the world at the conference shows a desire for international cooperation on open networks and network security. Global governments “are concerned about any data network and the threats associated with operating a network."

Carrier View

Chris Boyer, AT&T vice president-global security and technology policy, said his perspective on ORAN has remained steady for years. Open networks are “a great opportunity for us to really break lock-in and diversify the supply chain.” The question has been how to “create momentum” around an “environment” where a carrier can pick “best of breed suppliers,” he said: “That was the goal four or five years ago and that continues to be the goal today.”

The industry is making progress on ORAN but maybe not as quickly as some had hoped, Boyer said. “I still feel very strongly that open RAN is going to be … the fundamental network that we’re going to see in wireless by the end of the decade.” AT&T has focused for years on moving to a more modern network architecture and ORAN “to me is just a natural extension of those efforts.” Much of the network already uses software-defined technology and runs on cloud infrastructure, he said.

The RAN is the last major component of the network to move to the cloud, Boyer said. “It’s probably the most complicated because it involves radios and frequencies and so there are a lot of challenges,” he said. “We’re making a lot of progress.”

EchoStar, through Dish Wireless, built the nation’s and world’s first “stand-alone, 5G, cloud-native open RAN network, currently serving more than 73% of the U.S. population with more than 20,000 towers deployed,” said Svetlana Matt, EchoStar director-public policy. The company is now committed to building a more robust ORAN ecosystem here and abroad, she added.

Dish built its 5G network in less than three years, starting during the COVID-19 pandemic, Matt said. That “really is a testament to open RAN.” Dish wouldn’t have been able to build a large legacy network in such a short period of time, she said.

Uncertainty remains about the performance and stability of some of the network elements available today for open networks, said Robinson Chiu, researcher at Taiwan’s ChungHwa Telecom. Most operators worldwide have been building 5G non-stand-alone networks, Chiu said. “This will limit the development of ORAN equipment.”

Vietnam’s Viettel Group, which runs networks globally, has also found that ORAN doesn’t always perform as well as legacy networks, which is an issue the industry must address, said Nguyen Trong Cong, Viettel director-innovation and technology.

ORAN Notebook

People ask why DOD is tracking ORAN closely, said Tom Rondeau, principal director at DOD’s FutureG & 5G Office. “We have a fairly worldwide presence … for our peacekeeping and warfighting missions,” Rondeau said. “We really require secure communications, trusted infrastructure to do that work.” In addition, DOD is focused on 5G and national security, engaging with the wireless industry in a way it didn’t in the past, Rondeau said. DOD conducted 5G tests at different bases (see 2011130051), but mostly relied on a traditional RAN, he noted. “We really were trying to push into the open RAN work and promote that as much as possible." ORAN is maturing and all DOD’s new projects are “predicated on open RAN, unless you give us the most compelling reason” that’s not possible. “We’ve yet to see [a reason] that makes sense to us.” The military is working with a major carrier on one of the first “foundationally open" RAN networks in the U.S. “That will be an exciting proof of concept within the U.S.” DOD is also interested in building private open networks, starting at its Naval Air Station Whidbey Island near Seattle. At Camp Pendleton in California, DOD is considering deployable 5G networks that the Marine Corps could use, he said.