Open RAN Getting Traction for 5G Roll out & 5G Scenario in India

Jio is planning for a 5G juggarnaut, as the digicom arm of Reliance Industries wants to make 5G rollout of its own, not depending on existing tele-equipment majors like Nokia, Cisco, Samsung, Ericsson. Jio has agreement with Samsung for 4G roll out, and the deal will continue but Jio will embrace indigenous 5G tech.  

Jio took a stand not to work with Chinese vendors like ZTE, Huawei. Jio already has been praised by American politicians for no-China mode, and Jio received huge funding from America including tech major Google, Intel, Qualcomm and social giant Facebook. American PE firm Silver Lake has invested heavily into Jio and Reliance Retail. And many experts believe American PE firms will invest heavily into Reliance Retail, just like they did into Jio - already KKR seems interested in Reliance Retail as per media reports.

Just for an off-topic, Reliance Retail will take on Amazon India and Walmart backed Flipkart in the e-commerce field. And Reliance Retail would be targeting brick-and-mortar retail at the strongest way, as they acquired Future Group (Big Bazaar brand) for Rs 24,713 crore.

Now let’s go back to indigenous 5G tech from India - the Desi 5G Jio wants to build up. It is expected that Jio will opt for Open-RAN and eventually cloudRAN and vRAN (Virtual RAN). Jio has strategic investors like Qualcomm and Intel who can help them out to discover the way to Desi 5G. 

In September 2020, it has been known that Jio’s competitor Bharti Airtel will work with Altiostar to use vRAN in Airtel’s upcoming 5G services. Airtel will also conduct a trial of 5G tech with Altiostar once spectrums are available for trial run.

So What’s Open RAN and why the craze around it for 5G?

Since the inception, the usual mobile network equipment from vendors come with 'very sophisticated, but essentially proprietary' software and hardware - which forms the core of the network. This traditional Radio Access Networks is 'closed' in nature as it is incompatible with other vendors. And often these vendors may act stupid - they dictate the timeline and cost of maintenance and installation i.e. there is no easy upgrade or adoption for the networks. 

Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) is a concept based on interoperability and standardization of RAN elements including a unified interconnection standard for white-box hardware and open source software elements from different vendors. O-RAN architecture integrates a modular base station software stack on off-the-shelf hardware which allows baseband and radio unit components from discrete suppliers to operate seamlessly together.

Ashraf Dahod, CEO of Altiostar, explains, “The incumbents are supplying an all-in-one — it’s proprietary software running on proprietary hardware — and you’re going to buy everything from them. If you want to add a new service, you have to pay them millions of dollars to develop the software. And if you have three suppliers, you’re going to pay money to all three of them, and you can launch a service only when all three of them are ready.”

O-RAN underscores streamlined 5G RAN performance objectives through the common attributes of efficiency, intelligence and versatility. Open RAN deployed at the network edge will benefit 5G applications such as autonomous vehicles and the IoT, support network slicing use cases effectively, and enable secure and efficient over-the-air firmware upgrades. Apart from the technical advantages with openRAN, operators’ capex (capital expense) can be reduced up to 40% and opex (operating expense) can be cut by about 30%.

For example, Altiostar, conversely, supports small cells, indoor and outdoor macro antennas, millimeter wave (mmWave), massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), 4G, and 5G technology on a single software layer. That approach enables operators to plug in different hardware suppliers depending on who provides you with the best value. Under that framework, value-added functions and services have become virtual network functions (VNF) or containers instead of dedicated hardware. 

In short ORAN/OpenRAN means faster, cheaper, flexible, secure networks. It is rooted in 4G, deep in 5G and planning 6G!

Last year Vodafone tested ORAN in UK and other countries, and pundits thought it needs time to mature i.e. ecosystem to be developed first. Telcos showed interest to deploy ORAN in rural areas. But potential greenfield 5G carriers had seemed really interested. But the scenario is changing fast even during this COVID-19 pandemic. Altiostar CEO expects OpenRAN may go massive mainstream in next 3 years.

Many companies are now investing in potential openRAN vendors. In October 2019 multinational operator Telefonica announced a strategic investment in Altiostar through its corporate venture vehicle Telefónica Innovation Ventures (TIV). Under the partnership Telefónica has become full member of Altiostar’s new Technology Advisory Committee.

Worldwide openRAN is getting traction to cut down cost for 5G deployment. Research firm Dell’Oro expects cumulative Open RAN investments (hardware, software and firmware excluding services) to total more than $5 billion during the next five years. 

Companies behind O-RAN

While most of the big telecom equipment makers are not from America, like Samsung (South Korea), Nokia (Finland), LG (South Korea), Ericsson (Sweden), most of the companies are supporting ORAN from early dates are smaller ones and from north America like Altiostar, Maverin, Viavi Solutions etc. Most of the names are not so popular, but they are already working with leading telcos from the backend. 

Altiostar (https://www.altiostar.com)

Pioneer in Open vRAN (Open virtual Radio Access Networks), Altiostar has connections to India, Ashraf M. Dahod who is the president and CEO of Altiostar was a student of B.Sc in Physics in University of Bombay. He moved to America in 1970s and further studied in University of Michigan, Stanford University and Harvard University. 

Altiostar has its own Indian arm, Altiostar Networks India Pvt Ltd since 2012, based in Bengaluru. In May 2019 Tech Mahindra had invested in Altiostar (17% stake) along with Rakuten and Qualcomm. Tech Mahindra also has a value-added-reseller/system integrator contract with Altiostar.

Founded in 2011 Altiostar has been the torchbearer of open RAN. Splitting the RAN into a virtualized centralized unit and virtualized distributed unit running on Commercially Off-The-Shelf (COTS) x86 server hardware is something that Altiostar pioneered and has tested with real commercial traffic in partnership with many operators since 2014-15, a the first step towards open access networks. 

Now, the industry recognizes the advantages and the need for open RAN and is coming together in various alliances and consortiums to standardize open architectures.

Update: In September 2020, Tech Mahindra exited from Altiostar, as Rakuten USA Inc. acquires their 17% stake. Through the agreement with Rakuten, Tech Mahindra would also provide managed IT, security and network services to Rakuten Mobile. In August 2021, Rakuten of Japan, already majority stakeholder, took full control of Altiostar. 

Mavenir (https://mavenir.com)

Mavenir is the industry's only end-to-end, cloud-native Network Software and Solutions/Systems Integration Provider for 4G and 5G, focused on accelerating software network transformation for Communications Service Providers (CSPs). Founded in 2005, Mavenir with HQ at Texas, went through complex corporate history as a result of repeated acquisition and spin off, in 2015 it was acquired by Mitel, renamed as Mitel Mobile. In 2017 merged entities of Siris, Xura, Ranzure and Mitel Mobile was rebranded as Mavenir under leadership of Pardeep Kohli. It has more 200 operators as clients. 

Their list of World's first includes VoWiFi, VoLTE, RCS, Virtualized 4G Services, Virtualized EPC Deployment, Mobile-Native Enterprise Communications. And they had won several awards including best '5G core' and best 'OpenRAN' at 5G World 2020. 

Mavenir also has key people of Indian origin. Pardeep Kohli is the president and CEO of Mavenir. Last year Mavenir appointed Anirudhha Basu, ex-Ericsson executive. 

In end August 2020, Mavenir did the world’s first OpenRAN vRAN call fully containerized with O-RAN Split 7.2 architecture, in Turkey with Turkcell's Edge Cloud system. NTT Docomo's specialized unit, NTT Data has been working with Mavenir to develop 4G/5G systems for private networks in business hubs of Germany. 

Interestingly a handful of Indian companies are working on core solutions for OpenRAN or 5G from pretty early days, even before Jio's entry. Prominent Indian IT companies like TCS, Wipro and Tech Mahindra also have strong presence in telecom sector. 

Cyient Limited (https://www.cyient.com)

Founded as Infotech Enterprises Limited in 1991 in Hyderabad, the company got rebranded as Cyient Ltd in 2014. It has grown by several acquisitions of multiple companies and it is the one of top outsourcing company of the world. 

It provides intelligent network solutions for global telcos and is closely involved in small cell based 5G rollouts across Australia, South Korea, US and Europe.

Saankhya Labs (https://saankhyalabs.com) 

HQed in Bengaluru, this company owns intellectual property and provides radio units and chipsets for VRAN deployments. They are developing an ORAN 7.2x compliant multiband 5G Remote Radio Unit (RU), which is to be available in Q1, 2021. 

The list includes - Vihaan Networks, Sterlite Technologies Ltd, Nivetti Systems, SignalChip, VVDN Technologies, Lekha Wireless Solutions, Niral Networks, Tejas Networks, Himachal Futuristic Cable Ltd (HFCL).

Global OpenRAN deployments

Dish Network of US is one of the major telco who is to embrace Open Radio Access Network (or OpenRAN or O-RAN) for 5G deployment.    

• In April they chose Mavenir as first 5G vendor.
• In the end of June, Dish tied up with Fujitsu to supply physical radio hardware which will broadcast 5G signal, and, Altiostar & Mavenir will serve the software needed. 
• In July Dish announced an agreement with VMWare to use VMWare Telco Cloud to make its 5G technology cloud native.

Japanese e-commerce giant, Rakuten has launched 4G services on greenfield basis, and they embraced Open RAN 4G solutions from Altiostar. Altiostar is sole software supplier for Rakuten, who holds majority share in Altiostar. 

There are three forum platforms had been built to shape out this new technology. 

O-RAN Alliance (https://www.o-ran.org) 

It was founded in 2018 by AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DOCOMO and Orange. The management structure consists of an Operating Board made up of 15 operators and a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) co-chaired by Dr. Sachin Katti, Professor at Stanford University and Dr. Chih-Lin I, Chief Scientist of Wireless Technologies at China Mobile. 

In first half of 2020, 23 new O-RAN specifications have been released by O-RAN Alliance. On June 21, 2020 the Alliance has announced “Bronze” release of open source software. 

Operator members list includes AT&T, China Mobile, NTT Docomo, Orange, T-Mobile, Airtel, Bell, British Telecom, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Dish, Jio, KDDI, KT, SingTel, SK Telecom, SoftBank, Sprint, Telefonica, Telstra, Telus, TIM, US Cellular, Verizon and Vodafone. 

For full list of members, visit https://www.o-ran.org/membership

TIP (Telecom Infra Project) - https://telecominfraproject.com

Their stated mission is to validate the technology and ensure it is generally available. 

Open RAN Policy Coalition (https://www.openranpolicy.org)

The key objective of the Open RAN Policy Coalition is to promote open interfaces and interoperability while neither O-RAN nor TIP is focused on policy. 

ORPC is filling a need in taking the broad work of those two organizations and channeling it toward government initiatives. ORPC drives policy to make sure standards are open and interoperable going forward in contrast to standards bodies like 3GPP which have missed the mark in the past.

Open RAN Policy Coalition members include Airspan, Altiostar, American Tower, AT&T, AWS, Broadcom, Ciena, Cisco, Cohere Technologies, CommScope, Crown Castle, DeepSig, Dell Technologies, DISH Network, Facebook, Fujitsu, GigaTera Communications, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Inseego, Intel, JMA Wireless, Juniper Networks, Ligado Networks, Marvell, Mavenir, Microsoft, NEC Corporation, NewEdge Signal Solutions, Nokia, NTT, Nvidia, Oracle, Parallel Wireless, Pivotal Commware, Qualcomm, Quanta Cloud Technology, Radisys, Rakuten Mobile, Reliance Jio, Rift, Robin, Samsung Electronics America, Telefónica, Texas Instruments, U.S. Cellular, US Ignite, Verizon, VMWare, Vodafone, World Wide Technology, XCOM-Labs, and Xilinx.

5G Scenario in India

In my previous post, I shared the fact that Reliance Jio is backed by two tech subsidiaries of Reliance Industries - Rancore and Radisys. By opting OpenRAN systems for future network upgrade to 5G, Jio will have major advantage from homegrown software backup. It will also cut down costs. This is the best way to usher desi 5G to Indians. 

Jio has been running a start up accelerator, Jio Gen Next via which the company has investments in Haptik, C-Square, Fynd, Netrdyna, SankyaSutra Labs, Tesseract and Embibe. Tesseract is the main company who created Jio Glass, showcased prototype during 43th AGM conference of Reliance Industries. That is kind of similar to Google Glass. 

Even Airtel is also in talks with Altiostar to conduct OpenRAN trials once spectrum is given for testing. 

But India's telecom sector is so debt ridden, and hungry Govt wants to make more money by selling 5G airwaves - that 5G will see many roadblocks.