MWC generated a lot of announcements in the Open RAN space, not surprisingly. That makes it harder to dig through to identify relevant trends, I’ve picked out some specific announcements that I think fit a pattern and offer some useful insights into where mobile networks, and networking overall, may be heading.
SDxCentral did a piece on an IEEE-sponsored panel on the state of Open RAN, which is a good place to start. Like a lot of panels, this one had its share of platitudes, but one point that came through and reflects the real world quite well is that Open RAN is a bit of the classic horse-designed-by-committee in multiple ways. First, it’s a consortium activity, and the telecom space is littered with examples of this kind of initiative that just dissolved into collective confusion. Second, the committee model is carried on to deployment through the integration challenge.
Operators, like most technology users, really hate integration. Just the term rouses visions of seas of fingers pointing everywhere, or little players so small that there’s no recourse possible if they mess up. Nokia, an established mobile vendor on the panel, called this point out. Others have criticized Nokia for being an OINO open-in-name-only) but many operators see them as the only credible open game in town.
Telefonica offered an important operator perspective with its announcement of Release Two of Open RAN Technical Priorities. Many operators and Open RAN supporters have told me that this release represents a foundation for “stepping from proof of concept to deployment”, as one operator put it. Operators want to see not just a complete architecture, but one that’s operationalized and integrated. To quote Telefonica, this release “focuses in particular on intelligence, orchestration, transport and cloud infrastructure, aiming at defining a fully automated and interoperable Open RAN system.”
Release Two and the views on it demonstrate that the benefit of “openness” isn’t a free pass to acceptance; operators want Open RAN to offer the kind of stability and quality that they’re used to. That “as they’re used to” description frames the face-off that MWC presented. Release Two demonstrates that telcos recognize that 5G is a piece of a very large transformation. That may be frightening to a conservative vertical like telecommunications. That this issue is coming to the fore now suggests that a gap has developed between the “maturity” of Open RAN and the need for telcos to deploy 5G. It’s that gap the public cloud providers may be looking to fill.
One of the biggest drivers of Open RAN is something that’s not directly connected to the technical specifications or even the concept. Operators have been very interested in having public cloud providers undertake a major role in 5G hosting, and the cloud providers have responded by offering 5G feature support to a greater or lesser degree. Microsoft bought a couple of companies (Affirmed and Metaswitch) that had software implementing elements of 5G, for example. Arch-rival Amazon, of course, countered.
The Amazon approach, presented at MWC and summarized for analysts here, is much broader than just 5G hosting, or even edge computing. Amazon believes that telcos need a broad cloud transformation, one that specifically includes the OSS/BSS systems involved in customer care. At the opening of the presentation, Amazon makes a telling point, which is that they hope to bring all the values of the cloud to a partnership where the telcos contribute the connectivity they’ve provided for decades. Is this a “stay in your lane” admonishment?
Amazon is building from its previous telco-centric AWS Wavelength and AWS Outpost offerings, Snowcone edge computing, and then 5G deals like AWS Private 5G, AWS Cloud WAN. All this leads to an Amazon commitment to build a cloud-native 5G infrastructure solution, including RAN, Core, and edge. Their MWC talks were focused on announcements of operator and vendor deals more than on new AWS features, but the announcements demonstrate that what Amazon wants is a “network as a service” form of 5G support rather than a strategy to help telcos move their stuff to the cloud. That doesn’t mean that Amazon won’t support telco-supplied stuff; they’re happy to do that in AWS and in Outpost.
Amazon wants to build a broad ecosystem, too. They’re calling for partnerships with the whole spectrum of vendors that telcos now deal with, and that may be the most interesting thing of all. It’s hard to imagine that a commitment of telcos to any public cloud strategy wouldn’t generate collateral losses to vendors who’d normally supply the elements of telco-owned infrastructure and operations tools. It’s also hard to imagine that a vision of cloud-sourcing everything wouldn’t give telco traditionalists the willies, so Amazon’s position here is bold. They’re betting on a radical win in the telco space, risking a substantial pushback from everybody and a potential loss.
Juniper is obviously one of those traditional telco vendors that Amazon would love to have in their tent, but Juniper has its own bottom line to consider, and its own strategy to promote, as described in this SDxCentral piece. “Open RAN will have its day”, says Juniper’s CTO. It’s not “if” but “when”. That doesn’t necessarily put Juniper into the position of advocating the telcos go it alone, without the public cloud providers, but a subsequent quote from the article does. “Telcos are trying to become tech companies,” he said. “They see how hyperscalers are expanding into their space more and more with local zones. They are reducing the last mile between hyperscalers and the end customers and enterprises, and that’s where the telcos get squeezed out.”
Juniper, like other non-mobile-incumbent promoters of Open RAN, likely sees the 5G RAN space as the leading edge of what might be a movement to open-model networks, one to open 5G, maybe a movement to open mobile networks to new players, or a movement to an “as-a-service” public cloud model that could impact network investment by telcos and even other verticals. Table stakes in this confusing competitive mix is a presence in Open RAN in general, and the RIC (RAN Intelligent Controller) in particular. Juniper has that, but the AWS “ecosystem” announcement and the Release 2 Technical Priorities suggest that more may be needed.
Telefonica and AWS may be agreeing on that critical point. 5G is a complex structure in itself, beyond RAN in scope and leading to questions of new applications and new compute models, like edge computing. A telco network of the future would then be expected to be quite different from today’s model, and that doesn’t even consider questions like the impact of radically improved consumer broadband Internet, the metaverse, and metro-mesh configurations of the future core network. Telefonica is saying that whatever that future is, it has to be a fully operationalized ecosystem. AWS is saying that whatever that future is, telcos really need to let the cloud provider experts host the non-connectivity piece for them. Network vendors have to say something too.
MWC said that 5G and Open RAN are not point technologies, but both indicators and drivers of a broad change in what “service” means, how “infrastructure” is built and managed. Those are obvious messages, but a less obvious one is the notion that 5G may be the first network technology that steps beyond connectivity, at least in terms of the full scope of its justification and benefits. Operators appear to have decided not to try to go it alone; “carrier cloud” isn’t a mandate to deploy edge computing for any of the operators I’ve chatted with, though some hold the option to do some deployment on their own.
It’s hard not to contrast this to AT&T’s insightful vision of a future where operators develop wholesale features to augment connectivity and build a partnership with OTTs that’s more balanced. Do we have a future like that, or do we see operators focusing more and more on pure connectivity, leaving all the service value-add to others? There’s a lot riding on that question.