Mavenir Pins Open RAN Rise on Radios

Mavenir’s decision to more forcefully become a bonafide supplier of radios isn’t just a natural extension for the company, it’s also a necessary step to fuel growth in the open radio access network (RAN) space at large, according to John Baker, the vendor’s SVP of business development. Mavenir’s decision to more forcefully become a bonafide supplier of radios isn’t just a natural extension for the company, it’s also a necessary step to fuel growth in the open radio access network (RAN) space at large, according to John Baker, the vendor’s SVP of business development. The company established a new formal business unit for this effort, claiming that the open RAN ecosystem depends on broader availability of compliant remote radio units that support various frequencies and requirements of mobile operators. Mavenir’s Radio Business Unit will be led by Mikael Rylander, SVP and GM of the new division, and supported by Puneet Sethi, also SVP and GM who recently left Qualcomm’s small cell and RAN business to join the company. The company has developed two outdoor 5G macro remote radio units and is designing a 5G massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radio for release in 2021. Open RAN vendors that want to build software-based systems “can’t go anywhere in the U.S. to buy a radio with U.S. frequencies, they’re all locked down” by incumbent proprietary RAN vendors like Nokia and Ericsson, John Baker, SVP of business development at Mavenir, told SDxCentral in a phone interview.  “The only way to get these radios to the market and open ecosystem is by doing our own development, and we’re doing that, and we are making the radios available to the open RAN ecosystem,” he said. “We’re doing it for our good, but we’re doing it for the ecosystem’s good as well.” Baker admits that efforts like this from an open RAN vendor that envisions a complete separation between hardware and software can muddy that message, but “the one big difference here is that we’re doing it with a reason and doing it for bringing solutions to the open RAN ecosystem.” Companies like Mavenir need to widen the supply chain and bring as many radios to market as possible, especially with so many frequencies at play around the world and highly technical applications like massive MIMO posing additional challenges, according to Baker. “Underneath it all, it really comes back to the fact that you’ve pretty much got a monopoly situation going on out there between two vendors. And until they finally agree to open up their radios to everybody then the only way that anybody is ever going to compete and break down the barriers of this is to have key radio products available through their own channels,” he said. Mavenir says it’s primarily a software vendor and it already works with 11 manufacturers that supply open RAN radios, so this more direct involvement in hardware suggests the company has encountered some weaknesses in alternative equipment.  Interest and investment in open RAN grew considerably in 2020, but at a base level “the amazing thing is all we’ve done is open an interface. And from opening that one interface, essentially the whole industry is being disrupted to the extent that there’s so much excitement around open RAN,” Baker said. The open RAN effort also, according to Baker, breaks down to a growing push to correct a mistake 3GPP, the standards body, made more than a decade ago when it declined to adopt a complete interface specification. “They allowed the manufacturers, if you like, to develop their own specification with all the details in it and those specifications then stayed proprietary, which meant it was impossible for another supplier to come along and supply product in the RAN space,” he said. “The real trigger for open RAN has been the open fronthaul interface” that the O-RAN Alliance developed to prove the viability of disaggregated network elements, Baker said. “The ecosystem is such that the network’s now disaggregated, and you can now have disaggregated suppliers. You don’t need one supplier to do it all.” Operators can achieve the definition and vision of open RAN because that interface from radios to the network core has been opened, he explained.  While technology leaders at many operators still struggle with integration challenges and the complexities of an open framework, Baker argues that most operators are already effectively working through those issues today. “The problem is they’re getting a message from their existing suppliers” that aims to question the viability of open RAN, he said.  “The behavior of a couple of these vendors is almost like a cartel or like a mafia, they’re trying to hang on to their market share but not listening to what their customers are really saying to them,” Baker said.  That power also extends to 3GPP, which “is still controlled by Ericsson, Nokia, and Huawei,” he said. Open RAN vendors and the groups they’ve formed have “put a plug in the hole” to make interface specifications more open, but the industry “still hasn’t fixed the fundamental issue of where this went wrong in the first place,” Baker said. 3GPP and governments need to ensure that network interfaces are open and not locked down by proprietary technology offered by a small group of vendors, he said, warning that the same closed approach could be bolstered in 6G if the industry doesn’t demand a common policy and philosophy around open architecture. Activities underway at groups like the O-RAN Alliance and the Open RAN Policy Coalition should be funneled back into 3GPP to “not allow the proprietariness creep back in there,” Baker said. “We’ve proven the interest, we’ve proven that countries are getting behind” open RAN, but the last step requires more international agreement on open telecommunications standards, he said, adding that the intent is there but it hasn’t materialized into standards development at 3GPP thus far.  Global aspirations aside, Mavenir is also striving for more opportunities in its home country of the U.S. Open RAN vendors are encouraged by growing interest in the U.S. government, Dish Network’s goal to build the largest open RAN network in the U.S., but the lack of a U.S. based RAN supplier remains a point of chagrin for many companies and political leaders. “We’re trying to bring back to the U.S. what it lost to China and Sweden and Finland because there is no generic large scale remote radio head supplier in the U.S. anymore,” Baker said.