Parallel Wireless Job Cuts Parallel Tough Open RAN Market

Parallel Wireless has reportedly cut staff in a move that highlights the volatile nature of the current open radio access network (RAN) market. Parallel Wireless has reportedly cut staff in a move that highlights the volatile nature of the current open radio access network (RAN) market. The cuts were noted in a LinkedIn post by Eugina Jordan, who had been VP of marketing at Parallel Wireless and a big focus of that firm’s industry outreach. In the post, Jordan cited “mass layoffs” across Parallel Wireless’ global operations. Parallel Wireless had not responded by press time to an SDxCentral request for more details, though a report from Light Reading noted as many as half of Parallel Wireless’ approximately 700 employees were impacted. Jordan noted in her comments on the job cuts that “market conditions are horrendous right now,” and that “many tech companies are in the same boat.” The cuts come less than a year after Parallel Wireless touted expansion of its global research and development efforts. Jordan, at that time, told Fierce Wireless that the vendor was planning to double its headcount by the end of 2022. Parallel Wireless does have dozens of open positions listed on its website. UPDATE: Parallel Wireless no longer lists any open positions on its website. The privately held company was founded in 2012, and has raised $8.8 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. The vendor is a strong proponent of open RAN architecture and has been included in trials and initial deployments around the globe. It provides software-defined, cloud-native open RAN architecture, including hardware and software components. It competes in the market against other open RAN-focused vendors like Mavenir as well as incumbent providers like Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and Huawei. However, Parallel Wireless has not been included in higher-profile open RAN deployments recently launched by Rakuten Mobile in Japan and Dish Network in the U.S. Many of its rivals have been included in those deployments – or bought outright by those operators – that are viewed as bellwether systems for the still evolving open RAN space. Both operators have cited challenges in stitching together components from different vendors to power those networks, a challenge also noted by industry analysts. “I think this is consistent with the message that we have communicated for some time, namely that we see good traction with the open RAN movement but the impact on supplier diversity remains uncertain,” noted Dell’Oro Group VP Stefan Pongratz in an email to SDxCentral. “Open RAN is a movement but it is not a magic movement – technology leadership and scale are still required to be successful in RAN. More opportunities now than ever before with different ROIs and uncertain timings are amplifying the risks and rewards for everyone, especially the smaller players.” The research firm recently noted a “surge” in open RAN spending, led by strong spending in the Asia-Pacific and North America markets. It expects open RAN spending will account for as much as 5% of the total RAN spending this year. Monica Paolini, president of Senza Fili, echoed Pongratz’ concern. “Clearly this is a sign that the Open RAN market, with all its potential, is a tough one for small vendors,” Paolini wrote in an email to SDxCentral. “This is not surprising, it is always the case with innovative startups in any technology. … And in this case as in other cases it is because there is a market potential that gets realized less quickly than many anticipated. Open RAN is a major change in the way we build and operate networks and as such it will take time to become widely deployed. For tier-one vendors, this may even be an advantage (more time to adapt). For small vendors, it is a real challenge. Consolidation has started already (e.g., Altiostar) and will continue. The RAN – in particular – is a very difficult market segment for small vendors. No matter how open the interfaces are, no matter how disaggregated networks can be, operators will try to keep a limited number of suppliers and continue to prefer large ones for most of their networks to protect their investment.” UPDATE: Story has been updated to note that Parallel Wireless is no longer listing open positions on its website.