Trend Toward Open Networks May Prove Inevitable for Many Carriers

Adopting an open network architecture is probably a “must” for carriers, said Michael Gronovius, Ericsson director-network evolution. “If you just look from a vendor perspective, you always want to have standards-based deployment,” he said. “If you have a high volume, the costs go down.”

One key is that when new architecture is deployed, carriers don’t have to “compromise” the performance of their networks, Gronovius said. Ease of use is critical, he said. “It’s not deploying one site, it’s about tens of thousands of sites.”

The various standards bodies are collaborating on ORAN “and the ecosystem is certainly vibrant within the ORAN Alliance,” said Mark Watts, a member of the Verizon technical staff. “What the future holds, I can’t really say.”

Moving to ORAN isn’t “an absolute requirement” for providers, said Umair Hafiz, senior network architect at Bahrain Network. But ORAN is “increasingly seen as a viable approach” to achieve network flexibility and vendor diversity, he said.

“The benefits of a disaggregated network architecture are clear: greater flexibility, interoperability, and innovation,” Joe Constantine, chief strategy and technology officer, and Haseeb Akhtar, RAN advanced architectures leader, said in an Ericsson blog post Monday. ORAN “will bring significant value to the entire mobile ecosystem, including communications service providers, software and hardware suppliers, consumers, enterprise businesses, and the developers who innovate on top of mobile networks,” they added.

Ericsson “has been making constant strides in its Open RAN journey, especially in the past two years, deploying virtualized components in live commercial networks,” working with AT&T and Verizon, the blog said. The success of open networks will depend on “virtualized cloud architecture (separating hardware from software), automation (creating new automation architecture to enable innovation across a multi-vendor ecosystem), and interfaces (standardizing additional interfaces to foster hardware vendor diversity).”

Whether it's open, virtual or legacy, a network still “boils down” to “the same building blocks of fronthaul, mid-haul and backhaul,” Watts said. Timing is critical to network operations, especially more dynamic operations, allowing for technologies like carrier aggregation or coordinating multipoint connections, he said.

Watts added that some advancements in the pipeline will change how networks operate. For example, Watts cited network “enablement,” which allows for automation, “which is key to a massive deployment whether it’s software or hardware” allowing “speed to market and a more consistent deployment result.” Through orchestration and control platforms, carriers could control the network more intelligently, he said.

One possibility for backhaul is a move to “intent-based” routing, Watts said. The network could take different traffic, including mobile and fixed wireless, or communications requiring low latency and “apply different parameters to the traffic steering or the traffic endpoints and be very specific on the type of service that’s being provided.” Through evolving fiber-based architecture and connectivity, carriers can “accelerate the deployment of higher and higher speeds."

AI “is transforming industries by making systems more intelligent, efficient and responsive,” Hafiz observed. In networks, AI “basically enables real-time decision-making, predictive maintenance, network optimization.” AI is “foundational for creating smarter and more autonomous systems.”

Hafiz cited other advances, including growth of the metaverse (see 2409120035) and extended reality and the launch of open application programmable interfaces. “All of these require unprecedented connectivity,” he said: “Transport networks are under significant pressure from multiple directions.”

Generative AI is in its “early days for everyone,” Gronovius said. Ericsson is part of the new AI-RAN Alliance and works with operators and vendors “to explore what are the best use cases and what use cases make sense,” he said. “There are a lot of areas to continue exploring.”