The world’s standards development organisations and operator alliances are now well developed in setting out requirements for 6G. Research teams at operators and vendors are pushing forward investigating chip and radio performance at new spectrum bands, new features like integrated sensing and communications, and new capabilities in the air interface. Discover more with this feature which looks at the latest from the ITU and NGMN, and takes an in depth look at research activities within one cluster of companies in Finland.
What is the opportunity for mobile operators in the connected automotive market? Many of the assisted and autonomous driving technologies being developed do not rely on mobile network connectivity, but there’s still a lot of opportunity for mobile operators in enabling safety, information and entertainment services to connected vehicles. Jeremy Carpenter explains how, and digs up some examples.
As the industry converges on Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, there are two letters that are dominating above all - AI. The topic of AI in telecoms stretches from customer facing and business use cases to operational automation and into the air interface itself. So how are operators adapting to AI within their businesses, what are some emerging use cases, and how are established telco vendors responding to the new AI landscape?
This regular feature from TMN takes a topic every issue and tells you, in a concise format, what you need to know. This issue we look at the critical issue of what still needs to happen in the telco cloud. The development of an automated, programmable, cloud-native network is now seen as critical to the future business model of mobile operators. Without it they cannot operate with the efficiency and flexibility they need to deliver new services. But there’s still a lot to do to construct the telco cloud. This feature takes you through the to-do list.
The Indian government has set targets for home-derived production of products and services in many areas. When Indian operators launched 5G, at unprecedented rollout speed, they also claimed that it was an Indian-native 5G. TMN looks at how they did this, who was involved, and what such national programmes might mean for the development of communications technology going forward. Anthony Savvas reports.
Our features in this issue reflect three topics that we thought would be the headliners at Mobile World Congress, and it seems, looking at early trails for the show, we were right.
AI is without doubt going to be the most discussed topic, as the industry discusses the benefits it can gain from applying Gen AI LLMs and Machine Learning and AI-assisted automation into their networks and business processes. Nvidia’s financial trajectory only fuels the assumption that investment will continue to pour into infrastructure to support use cases that stretch from CRM bots to automated network operations and more intelligent radios.
Open RAN continues to display its weird dichotomy in being much talked about but little deployed at scale. But its strategic importance is still high, and operators are sticking to the path of insisting that they are committed to vendor diversity. And there are some deployments too, with more to come. Not only that but the major Western vendors have decided that they are now all in on Open RAN, giving operators another route to an Open RAN network that doesn’t rely on smaller scale vendors, but which has the flexibility to incorporate new software technology or hardware as it arises.
Thirdly, 6G. With ITU formalising its processes for IMT-2030, and NGMN setting out its priorities in its sixth paper on the topic, research on new air interface, chip and energy-efficient components and software is under way. We catch up on the latest in 6G, a topic that will be (in some cases reluctantly) rising up the agenda at MWC24.
There’s more too, including a look at the operator opportunity in connected cars, and an update on what is still to be solved to deploy the telco cloud.
Commercial Director: Shahid Ramzan // shahid@the-mobile-network.com
Editorial Director:
Keith Dyer // keith@the-mobile-network.com
Creative Direction and Design: Shona Gow // hello@shonagow.co.uk // www.shonagow.co.uk
Enjoy the issue!
Keith Dyer keith@the-mobile-network.com
Standards bodies, vendors and operators are beginning to direct research towards candidate use cases and enabling technologies for 6G. TMN updates.
In December 2023, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) released the overall objectives for 6G networks, via its IMT-2030 programme of work.
The ITU published the framework for the development of standards and radio interface technologies within Recommendation ITU-R M.2160 on the “IMT-2030 Framework”.
ITU’s Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) will now focus on defining technical requirements, the submission process, and the evaluation criteria for potential 6G radio interface technologies.
For the next phase of 6G development, companies and industry associations will submit proposals for the IMT-2030 Radio Interface Technology (RIT) for ITU-R consideration in early 2027. These submissions will then be evaluated against the agreed minimum requirements prepared by ITU’s expert group on IMT
systems (ITU-R Working Party 5D), with the prospect of getting a final set of 6G technology standards approved by 2030.
The IMT-2030 Framework Recommendation identifies 15 capabilities for 6G technology. Nine of those capabilities are derived from existing 5G systems.
The ITU sets the requirements for what technology would fit within its IMT-2030 moniker. Standards bodies such as ETSI and 3GPP then work on specifying the technologies that will meet IMT-2030 thresholds. 3GPP does this via its ongoing series of Releases.
So, Releases 20 onwards have been targeted to include specifications that would meet 6G requirements. Release 21, starting from about 2027, is when the actual work items will start being included, after previous studies on use cases and pre-6G channel modelling.
A joint paper from ATIS and 6GSNS said that the ITU’s motivation for IMT2030 is “to continue to build an inclusive information society and to support the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).” Similar motivations have also been identified in the US and in the EU, where apart from the SDGs, EU policies like the Green Deal set out a target for the EU to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Additionally, 6G networks aim to provide environmental, societal, and business-sustainable solutions for the networking domain as well as for a variety of vertical industries.”
The drivers for 6G network development are not only the typical and expected performance improvements (e.g., throughput, latency, reliability, coverage, spectrum efficiency) but the societal, business, and policy goals that 6G can address. These goals will impact the technological choices for the design, development, and deployment of 6G networks.
The usage scenarios as captured by IMT-2030 extend the eMBB, mMTC, and URLLC IMT-2020 vision into six new categories:
• Immersive Communication
• Hyper Reliable and Low-Latency Communication
• Massive Communication
• Integrated AI and Communication
• Integrated Sensing and Communication
• Ubiquitous Connectivity
These usage scenarios require that the well-known KPIs (e.g., peak data rate, user-experienced data rate, spectrum efficiency, latency, reliability, etc.) go beyond what 5G can deliver. Moreover, IMT-2030 also defines new capabilities. Among these are coverage, sensing-related capabilities, AI-related capabilities, sustainability, interoperability, and positioning.
The range of values given for capabilites are estimated targets for research and investigation of IMT-2030. All values in the range have equal priority in research and investigation. For each usage scenario, single or multiple values within the range would be developed in future in other ITU-R Recommendations/Reports.
In December, the ITU’s spectrum conference WRC-23 identified new candidate spectrum to study for 6G. It
mid-band 7-24 GHz, mmWave, and up to sub-THz). The appropriate spectrum usage requires significant research efforts for spectrum and interference management, sensing, sharing, monitoring, control,
require continued progress into the “Angstrom” era of CMOS to keep up with demands for low-power computer and (AI-assisted) signal processing.
The emergence of new technologies like
They integrate various functions, such as digital signal processing, memory, and power management, into a single chip, making them more efficient and cost-effective.
The emergence of AI/ML as a technology will lead to its integration at various levels of the 6G platform. 6G is currently being contemplated as an AI-native platform (i.e., with systematic capabilities to exploit the high data volumes generated from within or outside the platform) in the wake of the current “cloud-native transformation” being contemplated by the industry. This may have multiple impacts at different levels, such as: i) the need to have powerful GPU technology capable of AI/ML-assisted intelligent/ reconfigurable management of radio waveforms as a function of traffic/channel characteristics, also enabling unification with NTN access capabilities; ii) processing capabilities as required to support AI/ML-assisted security from an end-toend or local perspective; iii) processing capabilities for real-time AI/ML-assisted function placement/execution as a function of the use case scenarios.
The advent of new deployment scenarios based on Reflective Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) requires the availability of intelligent (AI/ML-driven) surfaces built using metamaterials to reduce EMF exposure to the public.
The move toward virtualised networks that started with 5G is expected to continue and be enhanced by the emergence of 6G by the end of the decade. Microelectronics requirements are multiple and characterised by i) the need for software implementations to reach performance levels on par with classical hardware-based implementations, especially for real-time radio functions where generic purpose processors may not be enough. The need to avail from accelerators that may be incorporated in various platforms with virtualised implementations is important
in that context; ii) the need to benefit from open multi-source supply chains, RISC V technology developments may be contemplated in that respect; iii) the need to optimise energy efficiency at the processor level, whilst software implementation may lead to higher energy consumption.
Hexa-X-II is leading the way on the end-to-end (E2E) system design.
Much of the research being carried out in Europe is taking place with funding delivered via the Horizon Project to the Hexa-X-II programme.
6G Flagship project Hexa-X-II is leading the way on the end-to-end (E2E) system design (based on integrated and interacting technology enablers) and the enabling platform for 6G.
The project will continue on the tracks of the Horizon Europe project Hexa-X, which laid the foundation by developing the 6G vision and basic concepts, including candidate key technology enablers.
The work in Hexa-X-II expands from research to systemisation analysis, early validation, and proof of concept. It progresses from the 6G key enablers that connect the human, physical, and digital worlds to advanced technology readiness – validated technology –including key aspects of modules, protocols and interfaces, and data.
Hexa-X-II will design a system blueprint aiming at the sustainable, inclusive, and trustworthy 6G platform that should meet the future needs of serving and transforming society and business, as is illustrated in Figure 1.
Hexa-X-II will also address implementation aspects of the 6G platform and encompass a full scope consisting of:
• Defining use cases, services, and requirements, ensuring the value for society
• Designing the platform and system, ensuring global impact on 6G development
• Assuring technology readiness in critical areas, ensuring EU strategic autonomy.
On a global basis, operator Alliance the NGMN Alliance (NGMN) has issued a number of papers on 6G. Its most recent is the “ITU-R Framework for IMT-2030: Review and Future Direction”. In this, NGMN welcomes the recent report by ITU-R on the ‘Framework and overall objectives of the future development of IMT for 2030 and beyond.’
“Our publication underlines the importance of investment confidence for operators in order to deliver tangible value to customers while ensuring the commercial sustainability of current and future networks,” said Luke Ibbetson, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board and Head of Group R&D at Vodafone. “The capabilities identified for IMT-2030 should be able to be deployed as and when required, without compromising existing core connectivity services, and reflect a customer need that generates new value.”
There is close alignment between NGMN’s vision for 6G and the IMT-2030 framework. This close alignment covers vision, usage scenarios and essential capabilities, particularly related to practical and sustainable deployment and emphasizing harmonised global standards for mobile networks. NGMN goes on to provide recommendations and guidance on ITU-R aspects as it moves forward in the next stage of the IMT-2030 process, including:
• New features should be able to be deployed as and when required, without compromising existing core connectivity services, which reflect customer needs and generate new values.
• Evaluation should include interworking of IMT-2030 candidates with non-IMT systems.
• Reinforcement of the importance of global standards for mobile networks within industry consensus-based standards organisations (e.g., 3GPP).
ISAC refers to the use of radio signals to “sense” or detect and identify various objects and surfaces within a surrounding environment. It integrates the capability of sensing objects and artifacts into the communication system. This means that the radio network functions much like a radar, but in this scenario, it will be embedded into the network base station or user device instead of being an independent device with a distinct external data network.
Alain Mourad, Head of Future Wireless Europe Lab, InterDigital, explained that integration of sensing and communications “will touch on nearly every aspect of system architecture, protocols, and radio access and will represent a major shift in the way communications systems and protocols are designed and implemented.
Even today, industry is beginning to explore early ISAC in the telecommunications stack, focusing on system architecture, use cases, requirements, capabilities, and applications.”
ISAC will also be reliant on the use of AI and analytics within the air interface, making the development of an AI-native air interface and ISAC symbiotic.
Mourad said, “These two, the integration of sensing and AI with communications are like twins – they share a lot in common. Sensing data needs analytics, some AI on top of it, making sure that sensing supports the communications system better. It goes both ways.”
“The best way I explain ISAC is it involves your phone or a base station being a radar. So imagine a base station with a signal, the same NR signal we have today, that signal hitting an object in front of me will
• Consideration that advanced features introduced with the IMT2020 network and/or a new radio interface might be candidates for IMT-2030.
• Any new radio interface must demonstrate significant benefits over and above IMT-2020 in key metrics such as spectral and/or energy efficiency, overall energy consumption reduction and/or cost advantages.
• Further work would be beneficial, as input to the process and next steps, to understand the commercial imperative for any extreme requirements of IMT-2030.
• IMT-2030 should continue to evolve based on IP communications, considering cloud native solutions, disaggregation, and service-based architecture, ensuring both forward and backward compatibility. Support for self-organisation to manage complexity and emerging capabilities.
be reflecting from this object and being received by a nearby phone. That phone has the capability to assess a reflected signal from that object and detect what it is, its location, what it’s made of and so on. This is what we are trying to achieve, using the radio signal and detecting what is in the environment and making use of it either to improve communications signal and performance, or expose it to other applications that are running on top of the network.”
“There are potential commercial use cases like intrusion detection, UAV detection and tracking, automotive manoeuvring, navigation, immersive and XR is another category, and also health and environmental monitoring. So it could be a home alarm system, or another one I like is being told where there is a free parking spot, using the radio signal to sense the environment.”
Mourad explains the current state of research. At the moment the goal is to streamline research work going on around Europe through the ETSI ISAC ISG, at a prestandard phase, so it is ready to support 3GPP when it kicks off in two to three years time. The ISG group, established in September 2023, has six priorities.
• Define priority 6G use cases and sensing types
• Develop advanced channel models for target 6G ISAC use cases and validate through extensive measurement campaigns
• Specify KPIs and evaluation methodology building upon synergies with ETSI ISG RIS and ISG THz.
• Explore System and RAN architecture framework for 6G ISAC
• Study the privacy and security aspects of sensing data
• Study impact of widespread deployment of ISAC on UN SDGs
Interdigital will have an ISAC demo at MWC that will demonstrate a connected factory environment that uses InterDigital’s sensing solutions to retrieve and send realtime information from network and device sensors to remotely control an automated vehicle. InterDigital’s demonstration will display how the integrated communication between device and network sensors can empower applications and end users to use sensing results to navigate environments.
In the north of Finland, a famous cluster of companies supports research into new radio technology. From well known names like Nokia and Keysight to renowned research institutions such as the University of Oulu and VTT, to more tactical companies such as KNL, a shortwave radio specialist for military applications, this small area contains a concentration of wireless expertise to rival any in the world.
There’s also a large gathering of companies involved in the products and applications that benefit from newer wireless network capabilities. These are companies developing smart eye glass technology, software for cars, healthcare devices and other products. Many of them formed in the last decade and a bit as a result - locals say - of Nokia collapsing off its burning platform in 2011 and giving thousands of laid off staff the motivation to form and move into start-ups.
Radio engineers work on long lead times. The work on a lab bench now might not be in a commercial network for another 5-10 years, if at all. That means that researchers in Oulu, as elsewhere, are thinking about 6G radio, even though it is likely to be at least 2030 before anything that might be called a 6G commercial network is in operation.
What’s slightly different about Oulu is that it is home to a 6G Flagship programme that was the first in the world
to start asking 6G questions - such as why might society need 6G, what would it be for, what technologies might enable those use cases, how can we build them?
Oulu University’s 6G Flagship is one of 14 scientific research flagships selected for funding by the Finnish government. Reflecting the strategic importance the Finnish government attaches to communications research, it was the first project chosen as a national research flagship and it has been in existence since 2018, which roughly coincided with the deployment of the first pilot 5G networks. The Flagship has leveraged an initial EUR25 million government seed funding to secure an overall budget of EUR250 million from private funding and EU funded research grants.
6G Flagship’s first white paper was amongst the first documents to wrestle with what 6G might be for.
Finland’s commitment to funding 6G research is ongoing - its 6G Bridge programme run by Business Finland has funded 30 projects with EUR130 million funding through 2023-2025, whilst 6G Finland is a national 6G coalition formed in May 2022 to lead 6G at a policy level. Then Finland itself sits within the EU research and funding framework. Following on from its 5G-PPP programmes the EU is running 62 projects within Hexa-X and Hexa-II, under the organisation of 6G-SNS.
As one of the earliest, if not the earliest, formal 6G research projects, 6G Flagship’s first white paper was amongst the first documents to wrestle with what 6G might be for. At that time there were certain standout items. 6G must meet societal goals, and for this the researchers latched onto UN SDGs. It must also transform energy efficiency.
By exploiting higher frequency bands in sub Terahertz frequencies it might also enable use cases such as holographic communications. These would necessarily be dependent on short range, D2D and D2X networks.
As a result there was also an early statement that 6G wireless connectivity would not be solely or even mostly controlled by mobile operators deploying networks in licensed spectrum. The paper said that to enable the deployment of alternative networks in unlicensed spectrum, or in high band spectrum with short range propagation, 6G should also somehow encompass a change in regulatory regimes, to enable a range of deployment options.
Since then it has produced a further 12 white papers that have expanded on many areas, but some of these core themes remain.With a second phased starting in 2022, the flagship now has 500 researchers, drawn from 50 countries, spread across four strategic work areas. Of these its work on wireless connectivity research is the largest, looking at what a future 6G RAN (or RANs) might look like. A second stream looks at device and circuit technologies. A third stream investigates distributed and wireless
computing, while the final stream takes on sustainable and human-centric services and applications.
In its labs, TMN was able to see work undertaken on Reflective Intelligent Surfaces, with horn antennas reflecting beams to study the behaviour of radio signals in the 140 GHz band, to study the performance of signal propagating at such high bands.
In a chamber there was testing of the RF capabilities of a first sub THz chip, at 300 GHz, where applications may include combined communications and sensing, as a well as very high bandwidth apps such as holographic communication. The chip designed here takes RF data and down converts that to 1 GHz and from there to a digital signal.
The Flagship also takes advantage of a Test Network at the University of Oulu, which in turn is backed by Nokia’s radio research. The NSA and SA test network currently has a 5G macro site at 3.5 GHz, as well as small cells indoors, including a mmWave access point at 24 GHz. Outdoor mmWave is currently planned. There is also a platform to connect 400 IoT sensors, a vEPC as well as a 5G core network, and an MEC platform for edge processing. Through 2024 this architecture will include deployment of a RIC platform and xApps on the edge platform.
The Test Network benefits directly from Nokia’s involvement (it is based on Nokia equipment and software), and Nokia in turn can use the network as one of the proving grounds for its own research. Nokia might bring interesting problems to academics to solve, and it might also introduce research results into its product portfolio evolution.
Crucially the Flagship also sits within a wider wireless ecosystem based around Oulu specifically, and Finland. As a city region, Oulu hosts over 1,000 tech companies, with (for Finland) a very young average age of under 40, something boosted by the presence of 25,000
students. There are 12,000 non-Finnish inhabitants from 120 countries.
And the city is currently growing by 3,000 people a year. This ecosystem includes companies such as:
• KNL, which is developing long range radio technology in the shortwave band, with applications already adopted by the Finnish military. In fact military and secure communications might well become one key driver for radio research in the cluster, as Finland’s membership of NATO and its worsening relation with Russia, with whom it shares its only land border.
• Another company with expertise in tactical and secure comms is Bittium, which develops Software Defined Radio solutions for the military, as well as tactical IP Wireless solutions.
• Keysight and Orbis systems. Keysight is providing its emulation and test systems to developers that are investigating the operation of radio in new frequencies, and the addition of AI techniques into the air interface. Orbis is a provider of test systems, including OTA chambers and shielded rooms, as well as RF signal switching and functional test systems.
• Elektrobit’s software is embedded in modules in connected cars. The company is targeting the development of open software architectures within vehicles to provide a platform for software connectivity and development. The importance of in-vehicle software will increase as 5G and 6G networks enable deeper V2X connectivity outside the vehicle, and as car OEMs compete on dashboard features and control and analysis of data.
• Dispelix is developing waveguide technology for smart and AR/VR glasses that can look and feel like wearing normal glasses.
NTT DOCOMO has demonstrated a mobile network equipped with In-network computing functions. In the experiment, DOCOMO expanded the 3GPP standardscompliant mobile core network based on the concept of the “Inclusive Core”, demonstrating that high performance applications can be used with low latency by dynamically allocating the computing resources within the network depending on the characteristics of mobile devices and communications. This result will make it possible to reduce device processing load by assisting devices with low-latency and high-performance computing functions provided in the network. It is also expected that 6G/ IOWN-era services, which require highperformance processing capabilities on the device side, will be used without depending on device performance.
functions including GPUs and other accelerators in the In-network Service Acceleration Platform (ISAP).
ISAP accelerates the federation between the device and the cloud in lowlatency and high-capacity 6G networks by offloading the processing previously performed on devices. This enables metaverse services that require high processing power, such as 3D rendering, to be provided at low latency even on simplified devices, such as smart glasses.
Another NTT Corporation project has seen it and Tokyo Denki University (TDU) develop the world’s first algorithm for simulating radio wave propagation that achieves both ultra-high speed and high accuracy, and demonstrating its effectiveness on an actual quantum annealing machine.
Existing mobile networks transfer data independently of device and cloud data processing. Because of this functional split, device and cloud services could not work together closely. On the other hand, 6G requires that device and cloud services work together closely to realise advanced services such as cyber-physical convergence. NTT and DOCOMO are taking on the challenge of solving problems such as device and cloud federation by assisting computing
Through this technology, wireless communication quality estimation of various wireless communication systems for individual terminals in the cyberspace constructed on the network can be performed in real-time in the order of msec and with high accuracy with errors of several dB. By using this information as control information for wireless communication systems in the physical space, it is possible to provide optimum wireless communication quality in realtime for each user.
The Energise project in Ireland aims to reduce energy consumption in mobile networks and pave the way for sustainable 6G networks.
Researchers at Connect, the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Research Centre at Trinity College Dublin, are collaborating with multinationals to tackle energy challenges associated with future networks.
The researchers believe Open RAN technology has the potential to reduce energy consumption considerably. Open RAN differs from traditional networks by allowing different parts of the network’s infrastructure to be built by different vendors.
Prof Marco Ruffini, the coordinator of the Energise project, said the goal is to tackle the energy efficiency challenge “head on”.
“Open RAN networks hold great promise for the future of telecommunications, providing the flexibility and scalability necessary to facilitate rapid deployment of advanced communication services,” Ruffini said. “Our approach aims to integrate AI to optimise these networks, also making them more environmentally sustainable.”
The Energise project includes support from Intel and experts from Tyndall National Institute, Software Radio System, VMware and Dell. The project is being funded by a €2.3m grant from Ireland’s Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund (DTIF).
In February 2024, SK Telecom and Rohde & Schwarz joined NTT DOCOMO’s collaborative 6G trials. The two new companies join existing collaborators Fujitsu, NEC, Nokia, Ericsson and Keysight. SK Telecom will participate in trials using AI technology to tailor radio interfaces for various propagation environments, which is being conducted by DOCOMO and Nokia. Rohde & Schwarz will use its measurement-system design technology in channel models to evaluate new wireless-sensing solutions
The automotive industry has a growing dependency on network operators to fulfil the connected cars promise of increased safety, better traffic efficiency, autonomous driving and hundreds of new applications for vehicle occupants and enterprises. However, in the complex ecosystem of OEMs, road operators and authorities, who is in the driver’s seat and where can MNOs provide unique value? Moreover, what are the compelling business cases for operators and how do mobile networks need to evolve to support connected car use cases? By
Jeremy Carpenter
The fundamental technology that enables connected cars is Cellular Vehicle-toEverything (C-V2X), defined by industry body the 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) as an umbrella term which encapsulates all 3GPP V2X technologies, including direct (PC5) and mobile network communications (Uu). Direct communications between vehicles, infrastructure and pedestrians, requires no network coverage but does require embedded modules in vehicles (on-board units, OBUs), road infrastructure (roadside units, RSUs) and (for vulnerable road users) wearable devices. While low-latency use cases such as forward collision warning are best enabled via PC5 - direct connections over dedicated spectrum (e.g. 5.9 GHz) – Uu leverages cellular networks to support commercial and safety use cases such as informing road users of driving conditions or avoiding dangerous situations on their routes. Cellular networks enable communications over much longer distances than
direct C-V2X and well for non-line of sight (NLOS) links. The other big advantage of network-based C-V2X is of course that the connectivity is deployed already (albeit not fully optimised for C-V2X), compared with direct C-V2X communications where the penetration of the technology is a very long way from widespread adoption.
C-V2X has hundreds of use cases as well as defined functions that range from simple information transfer such as road tolling service (RTS) to traffic efficiency measures such as green light optimal speed advisory (GLOSA) and safety functions like vulnerable road user collision warning (VRUCW). For most use cases and functions, partial deployment (such as PC5) is of limited value because they require multiple vehicles, infrastructure and road users to be connected – another advantage for pervasive mobile networks.
Cellular vehicle communications break
down into four broad usage groups: provision of services to enhance the driver experience, commercial applications for OEMs & enterprises, road operator use cases and the operation of autonomous driving (AD). Since each of these groups, at least to some degree,
involve the transfer of information over cellular networks, potentially MNOs could have a role in all of them.
A deeper analysis of the communication channel requirements, business cases, and MNOs core competencies will enable the potential sweet spots for operators to be identified.
The provision of value-added services to drivers and passengers, such as augmented reality (AR) on a heads-up display to allow the occupants to see information on local points of interest, vehicle access control to remotely manage who can use a car or enhanced real-time traffic information is something OEMs see as a commercial opportunity and are already monetizing. The business model is usually for the OEM to provide the services to the car owner free of charge for a limited time and then to offer them on a monthly subscription. In this scenario, MNOs
In 2022 Deutsche Telekom and the BMW Group teamed up to use Personal-eSIM and MobilityConnect to link vehicle connectivity with the customer’s mobile network, including 5G.
In the BMW iX and BMW i4, For EUR 9.95 per month, the MobilityConnect-option could be added by residential customers to an existing mobile communications contract. After a minimum term of one year, the rate option could be canceled daily thereafter. MobilityConnect gave customers a personal user profile. Once registered, the personal profile could be downloaded by the driver in any enabled vehicle with eSIM, giving customers access to their personal information and entertainment systems in their vehicle
become the client of the OEMs by providing the wireless connectivity to the vehicle, ensuring the Quality of Service and brokering the data that realises the application.
Many connected car enterprise applications, such as fleet management and telematics car insurance involve transferring a simple set of data to and from a limited number of users and can be addressed by MNOs. However, for many basic connected car applications, operators can be bypassed by OTT application developers and often there is not commercial “critical mass”, therefore the business case for basic enterprise applications is often borderline. However, a use case getting significant traction is supplying car usage and vehicle diagnostics to OEMs via the mobile network; providing real-time visibility of issues that would otherwise be reported manually. Vehicle suppliers can also execute OTA software updates to introduce new features to the head unit, activate hardware, and rectify issues without the necessity of a vehicle recall. Vehicle manufacturers are already adopting this technology, particularly with the evolution to software defined vehicles, e.g. to remotely execute a functional upgrade. There are distinct advantages for network operators here, with their expertise in the reliable and secure provision of information, especially when
Safer Transport for Europe Platform (STEP) is a system that enables public authorities to deliver timely safety and traffic information directly to smartphone mapping apps and in-vehicle navigation systems. Transport authorities today are often limited to delivering safety updates through road infrastructure – motorway gantries, variable-message or matrix signs and so on – or via a limited number of technologies developed by independent manufacturers, such as in-vehicle navigation systems.
STEP offers a solution to these challenges. As a cloud-based platform
built on open, industry standards, STEP enables an eco-system of participants – governments, transport authorities, vehicle manufacturers, mobility service providers and other mobile network operators – to work together to improve road safety across Europe.
In its initial phase, STEP will be able to facilitate the delivery of safety messages and targeted updates from road operators on lane closures, speed restrictions and traffic incidents on the road ahead, across a variety in-vehicle systems and navigation apps. STEP could also enable modelling of the road network in real-time using secure, anonymised, and aggregated vehicle position data. Vodafone’s long-term
Vodafone is getting traction in Germany, Italy and Spain for its Safer Transport for Europe Platform.
it comes from a diverse range of sources. Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone are front-runners in this area, already having secured existing contracts with OEMs and other clients.
Vodafone is getting traction in Germany, Italy and Spain for its Safer Transport for Europe Platform (STEP). STEP is a cooperative mobility solution that helps road users and road operators to make transport safer, more secure, and accessible. The STEP platform addresses the problem of mobility data fragmentation by distributing data and mobility insights across all different types of traffic and transportation domains all over Europe. STEP makes use of the ETSI standardised C-ITS message set for its C-V2X communications and leverages Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) to optimise efficiency and latency. Vodafone takes a broad, whole ecosystem (including vulnerable road users) perspective and fulfils the role of real-time C-V2X message distribution, brokerage and validation through a set of standard SDKs and APIs. A road operators’ mandate is to manage the operation of the highways in the most efficient and safe way. Transmitting such information as dynamic speed limits, hazard ahead and diversion information to road users is usually done via displays
on gantries at specific locations above highways which are expensive to deploy, operate and maintain. An alternative way of communicating such information immediately to road users is via the cellular network to the driver’s in-vehicle display either using the vehicle’s TCU or the driver’s phone mirrored to the car’s head unit. This concept is one that is being pursued by Vodafone through STEP and an associated Software Developers’ Kit (SDK) based on the use of UK National Highways’ data feeds and aligning with their “Naked Highways” vision of removing unsightly and expensive to operate and maintain driver information infrastructure. The integrity and availability of the data becomes more critical here, but it is something that MNOs are becoming more adept at with their experience of managing enterprise-grade networks for commercial applications.
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) levels vary from level 1 (feet off) to level 3 (hands off) and level 5 (mind off), enabled by a variety of technologies including radar, lidar, cameras and C-V2X.
ambition is to develop the platform’s safety functionality to include detection warnings for vulnerable road users –for example, a driver of a large vehicle could be alerted to nearby cyclists or pedestrians out of view – as well as fleet management, stolen vehicle tracking and supporting usage-based insurance.
In 2023, Vodafone announced a new feature for STEP – cooperative platooning, to make driving vehicles in convoy safer.
The combination of remote vehicle control with cooperative platooning via STEP was developed at the Vodafone’s Tech Innovation Center in Dresden, and
Whilst MNOs could play a role with the transmission of ADAS information via the cellular network, many are reluctant to step into the position of data carrier for safety-critical applications to avoid the liability minefield if a C-V2X communication failed and an accident occurred. Nevertheless, in a distributed systems environment dealing with functional safety, the communication channel will be organised as an “open channel”. So, if the open channel fails, the system will fail into a safe state. Therefore, MNO will take responsibility for operational stability/service resilience but never for safety, but only for. Furthermore, the latency associated with V2N communications is not sufficient for some real-time ADAS functions such as forward collision warning.
Dr Johannes Springer, 5G Automotive Lead at T-Systems, is confident that cellular networks can address the vast majority of C-V2X use cases. Furthermore, he points to network improvements and techniques MNOs can utilise to enhance their support of C-V2X applications.
successfully tested at the research, development, and validation track in Aldenhoven.
During the test at Aldenhoven, Vodafone’s engineers, working with partners from Dutch firm V-tron and Czechian-based Roboauto, were able to remotely control two cars while maintaining a consistent space and speed between them. Using a precise technology called cooperative adaptive cruise control, they were able to pass on accurate kinematic information from the preceding car to the one behind via STEP through cellular V2X communications.
These include optimizing the radio access network (RAN) for coverage and capacity, leveraging mobile edge computing (MEC) to reduce latency and network slicing to ensure sufficient resources are provided to support a specific application. In congested network conditions, service-focussed orchestration & traffic management can be used to assure Quality of Service. 5G standalone offers the future possibility to further reduce latency and Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) will have a role to play in ensuring vehicles are always connected, further eroding the unique use cases addressable by direct C-V2X.
The automotive industry understands that the behaviour of drivers will change as autonomy increases and the driver’s attention transitions from actively controlling the vehicle to consuming audio, video and data services. It is well advanced in enabling new vehicles with integrated cellular communications technologies (more than 80% of new vehicles have embedded SIM cards) to support various services including eCall,
telematics, road safety related services, infotainment, and internet access. Examples of successful services using the mobile network are: Increased safety by receiving hazard warnings (BMW, Daimler, Volvo Cars, Waze, etc), warning of approaching emergency vehicles, talking traffic apps and green light optimal speed advice.
To gauge the current engagement of mobile network operators in connected cars, one only has to visit the Vodafone Automotive LinkedIn profile to discover it’s real and it’s now. This entity employs more than 800 people who specialise in driver safety services, in-car telematics, and vehicle security. Their services include emergency calls, stolen vehicle recovery, usage-based services, driving behavior scoring for insurance companies, and fleet management solutions. Their existing client base includes over 35 OEMs like GM, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Renault, Toyota, Volvo & Volta Trucks as well as insurance companies such as Admiral, Generali Group & HDI and Generalitat de Catalunia, PMG & United Utilities who use their fleet management services.
In summary, MNOs can leverage their experience and expertise in delivery of services over the mobile networks securely and with assured Quality of Service to realise connected car applications, particularly those with fragmented data. Where MNOs can identify a robust business case and avoid liability issues, initial contracts with OEMs and road operators are already being signed with operators acting as the information broker. Operators are adapting networks to support C-V2X use cases by utilizing techniques such as RAN optimisation, MEC and network orchestration and this will further enhance their value to the C-V2X ecosystem.
The NGMN manifesto asked for...
“Accelerating Cloud Native in Telco: Challenges of Cloud Native Telco Transformation Today and How to Overcome Them – A CSP perspective” is a whitepaper written by telecoms operators, and published by the Cloud Native Network Function Working Group.
The global cohort of CSPs highlighted major challenges facing cloud native telco transformations and formulated principles, requirements, and the next steps that will help them deliver on the cloud native vision.
The group wanted to align its vision with that set by another operator grouping, the NGMN Alliance within its Cloud Native Manifesto.
1. Decoupled infrastructure and application lifecycles over vertical monoliths
2. ‘API first’ over manual provisioning of network resources
3. Declarative and intent-based automation over imperative workflows
4. GitOps principles over traditional network operations practices
5. Unified Kubernetes (or the like) resource consumption patterns over domain-specific resource controllers
6. Unified Kubernetes (or the like) closed-loop reconciliation patterns over vendor-specific element management practices
7. Interoperability by well-defined certification processes over vendor-specific optimisation.
Addressing this vision, and the delay in telcos being able to deploy and operate cloud native functions, the CNF working group wrote that CNF vendors have not been able to comply with the cloud native and openness requirements of CSPs yet, because these requirements are not yet stable and still emerging; however, it also said that the telcos have been hesitant to form those requirements partly because of the vendors’ aversion to giving up a lucrative professional services business model and control over vertical integration.
For the new model to work, vendors and CSPs must provide mutual SLAs: the CSP must guarantee a certain level of quality at the platform layer, while CNF vendors need to guarantee that the application will perform on the platform with SLAs that meet defined KPIs.
Having outlined the goal, the paper identified the following challenges and recommendations to cloud native telco adoption:
PRE-VALIDATION:
The pre-validation of CNF needs to be performed against a reference that is common for all players, which is upstream Kubernetes and further components from the CNCF ecosystem.
ADAPTATIONS:
It shall be possible for CSP’s DevOps or vendor’s delivery teams to adapt CNF artifacts (e.g. YAML manifests, Helm charts, NFVO descriptors) to align the deployments to the local specifics of CSP (e.g. Policy, RBAC, Compatibility) without special Change Requests or involving complex R&D processes.
CNFs shall be delivered with a series of automated tests that can be used to validate the CNF operation on the spot in CSP’s context.
AUTOMATION:
CNF deployment and configuration shall be fully automated (“everything as a code”) and done exclusively with declarative cloud native mechanisms like GitOps.
The CNFs shall be completely independent from underlying infrastructure platforms
LIFECYCLE:
CNFs have to be constructed in a way that fully tolerates graceful cluster rolling upgrade procedures without blocking them and without service interruptions.
The CNFs shall be instrumented to emit the protocol tracing data directly from their microservices to the configurable targets (e.g.application-level tracing).
ARCHITECTURE:
The CNFs need to be architected in line with 12-factors for CNF compliance with cloud native (See page 17 opposite) and in a way not depend on any particular cluster node or reasonably small group of cluster nodes.
SECURITY:
To run in a generic cloud native environment, CNFs have to strip down their expectations and require exactly the minimum rights that are needed for functioning.
RESILIENCE:
High-quality CNFs should be resilient to underlying infrastructure issues including complete failure, meaning that instead of completely failing, they note that something is wrong, log the errors, etc, and then return to full working order upon restoration of the underlying infrastructure service/resource.
ANUKET https://anuket.io/ Common model, standardised reference infrastructure specifications, and conformance and performance frameworks for virtualised and cloud native network functions.
NEPHIO https://nephio.org/ Carrier-grade, simple, open, Kubernetes-based cloud native intent automation and common automation templates to simplify deployment and management of multi-vendor cloud infrastructure and NFs across large scale edge deployments, enabling faster onboarding of NFs to production with a true cloud native approach.
SYLVA https://sylvaproject.org/ Cloud software framework, meeting telco and edge requirements and specific technical challenges on infrastructure layer, integrating existing open source components. It delivers a reference implementation and an integration & validation program for NFs and commercial stack distributions
The paper also identified 12 further factors for CNF compliance to Cloud Native Principles. CNFs need to adopt these principles as well.
COMPATIBLE:
Ideally, CNFs should work with any certified Kubernetes. Network interfaces and CNI plug-ins create hardware dependencies and tie them to specific infrastructure. A wise, but far-reaching, approach would be to develop all networks and I/O acceleration purely in software. Broader adoption of this software separation might take years to mature. In the short term, improve the automation to maximise the agility of the applications.
STATELESS:
Cloud native applications need resiliency to quickly fail and recover elsewhere in the cloud. The legacy approach uses local storage, which makes network functions heavy and slow. To improve workload mobility, we need to store the state in custom resource definitions (CRDs) or a separate database.
SECURE:
CNFs must be deployable on modern cloud platforms without the need for root administrative privileges. We need to remove dependency on root access by redeveloping the application code to use more modern, cloud native security protocols.
SCALABLE:
Cloud native telco applications need to support horizontal scaling (across multiple machines) and vertical scaling (between different machine sizes), so that operators can start with a very small application and grow it as needed.
CONFIGURABLE:
Open configuration offers telcos the control and freedom of DevOps tools to create and manage services. This should happen via custom resource definitions (CRDs) and operators, or other declarative interfaces.
OBSERVABLE:
Cloud native applications need an Open Metrics interface monitoring tools can use. Kubernetes needs to access performance metrics that support container-level resiliency features. Analytics applications can process these metrics and suggest configuration changes.
PORTABLE:
CNFs must be able to declare their platform requirements without implying a specific implementation. The cloud fulfils those requirements, making network functions oblivious to the underlying cloud offering.
INSTALLABLE AND UPGRADEABLE:
The use of CRDs, operators, and declarative configurations gives flexibility and ease in the deployment and upgrade of CNFs. Automation tooling can track and validate the installation and upgrade processes, with rollbacks supported if needed.
Cloud native applications need to minimise divergence between development and production, enabling continuous deployment for maximum agility. Telcos can deliver features and upgrades faster by implementing DevOps practices over a CI/CD pipeline.
OPEN:
Cloud native applications need to be orchestrated, run as a service, and expose themselves via RESTful interfaces. Nephio will achieve this goal by enabling thirdparty automation tools to reconfigure the application and achieve any type of orchestration use case.
TRACEABLE:
Cloud native applications need to support real-time troubleshooting through Open APIs with telemetry-compatible tracing.
LOGGABLE:
Cloud native applications need to support uniform logging for consistency and access to network-wide logs.
Gagandeep Kaur takes a look at recent and upcoming moves to apply Generative AI technology to the business of operating telco networks and businesses.
Globally, service providers are beginning to explore Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) to gain new operational efficiencies and improve customer experience while bringing down expenses. Over the last year or so, there has been a heightened interest in the technology, with several service providers taking initiatives to build capabilities in it.
About 94% of service providers believe that Gen AI will have a significant impact on their business over the next five years, according to a recent vendor-sponsored survey carried out by TM Forum. The launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022 and its subsequent success can be credited with Gen AI becoming one of
the hottest topics in the industry.
The global Gen AI in telecom market size was believed to be around $150.81 million in 2022 and is likely to touch $4,883.78 million by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 41.5% from 2023 till 2032, as per Precedence Research.
There are several areas, both in networks as well as business operations, in which the telecoms industry can benefit from Gen AI. The early use cases are centered around improving customer experience. As per a recent report by TM Forum, customer operations is the most widely adopted Gen AI use case with 92% of surveyed telcos using it to process
unstructured and structured data to enhance customer chatbot experience.
“Telcos have shown that they are keen to explore the benefits and opportunities of Generative AI, usually starting with pilot projects on a limited scale within their own operations,” says Andreas Olah, Senior Analyst, Digital Enterprise Services at Omdia.
“These often include support and analytics for employees in their call centers and sales functions to increase efficiency and productivity. Another emerging area for internal Gen AI usage is IT service delivery and ticket generation. In addition, telcos can support developers with Gen AI based tools – enabling code to be written naturally rather than using specific programming languages to create broader appeal across different platforms,” adds Olah.
Several telcos have started using Generative AI in networks and business operations. South Korea’s SK Telecom, along with Deutsche Telekom, are arguably at the forefront of adopting Generative AI.
SK Telecom is looking to transform from a communications service provider to a global AI company. To this end, it has taken several steps, including the launch of A. (A Dot) in 2022. Based on Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3), it allows users to execute several tasks on their smartphones.
“A good example of a telco as an early adopter of Gen AI is South Korea’s SK Telecom, which built large language models (LLM) for call centers and Korean language smart speakers with voice commands,” says Olah of Omdia.
SK Telecom followed this by partnering with Deutsche Telekom to jointly develop a Gen AI solution for the telecommunications industry. This was part of the wider Global Telco AI Alliance formed in July 2023, which now also includes e& (earlier Etisalat) and Singtel.
“The four telcos will jointly develop the Telco AI Platform by combining their respective technologies and capabilities. The Telco AI Platform is expected to serve as the core foundation for new AI services, including those designed to improve the existing telco services, digital assistants, and super apps that offer a wide range of services,” says the press release announcing the launch of Global Telco AI Alliance.
Apart from these, Orange is trialing and implementing the use of Gen AI for transcribing calls and summarising customer interactions. Verizon has also added Gen AI-based tools to its virtual contact center and is using the technology in its sales and marketing applications.
Taking a cue from developed markets, telcos in emerging markets, such as Reliance Jio, in India have also started focusing on Gen AI. Jio’s parent company, Reliance Industries, recently collaborated with AI chipmaker Nvidia, which could potentially lead to the development of an India-specific Large Language Model (LLM) that can enable Gen AI applications. Jio, along with TM Forum, opened an innovation hub in Mumbai, India, to accelerate the development of Gen AI for the telecom industry.
Several vendors have come up with solutions to help the telecoms industry use Gen AI for greater effcienciess.
A significant recent development is the 10-year $1.5 billion deal between Vodafone and Microsoft to transform the UK-based service provider’s customer experience using the latter’s Generative AI.
Several vendors, including Amdocs, Ericsson, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud, have come up with
solutions to help the telecom industry use Gen AI for greater efficiencies. Amdocs has separately formed an alliance with Nvidia and Microsoft to boost the adoption of Gen AI in the telecom industry.
“Service providers have started to use generative AI to improve network and operational efficiency and monitoring. There are typically three areas of network management, OSS [Operations Support System] and BSS [Business Support Systems], in which the usage of Gen AI will be high. They would also be using Gen AI for managing and developing network plans, especially for network event summarisation and prediction. Overall, it will help them automate their operations while improving cost-effectiveness. We believe service providers started exploring Generative AI in 2021-22 and are likely to start using it aggressively this year,” says Nikhil Batra, Research Director for Telecommunications in Asia/Pacific for IDC.
“Nearly 70% of telcos will allocate a part of their IT budgets over the next 18 months to generative AI. In addition, 64% of telcos will shift budgets to generative AI in the same time period,” Nikhil added.
SnowFlake launched NetworkGenie, a Gen AI tool for telecom service and network management.
NetworkGenie was developed in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and DigitalRoute to streamline processes, accelerate troubleshooting, and enhance customer experience.
Genie can work to identify, isolate and fix faults, such as higher call drop rates. To do this it needs various data sources, including billing, open Cell ID data, geospatial data and customer data and OSS data from different elements. Genie captures, parses and “enriches” the telco data using Digital Route, then stores it and enriches it in Snowflake Marketplace. Amazon Bedrock is then used for extracting insights from that data. The first step is to identify the needed data cross domain databases. The second is to identify the network and service KPI formula, then this formula is translated into an SQL query. The generated SQL query is then pushed down to Snowflake database via Bedrock agents and from there the insights are displayed to operational teams with maps, histograms and any other visualisations they would need.
The tool bridges the gap between OSS and BSS data, says Snowflake, meaning that data integration is no longer a roadblock, leading to faster troubleshooting and better customer satisfaction.
Netcracker introduced its Gen AI solution for telcos in September 2023. Its aim is to act as a bridge between telco data and open AI models. It does this by acting as a Trust Gateway, separating sensitive customer data from Gen AI models and establishing data access control.
It detects confidential customer data using machine learning for context recognition and bi-directionally obfuscates the data with fake information. Using this method, the Gen AI model can provide a high quality response in a safe way.
The solution utilises Netcracker’s telco-specific knowledge bases and integration with telco BSS/OSS to create personalised prompts for the Gen AI models with all the relevant data, instructions and context to create the best response.
Netcracker said it educates Gen AI models to understand the telecom business faster and better - improving interaction quality and performance, and facilitating Gen AI’s application within specific telco’s needs.
The company already has readymade uses - out-of-the-box telco assist scenarios that incorporate a set of skills, prompts and dynamic access to the required data sources to automate the process of creating a personalised and contextually aware prompt for Gen AI. During a session, the solution dynamically chooses the scenario that matches the specific request intent.
In mid-2023 Amdocs launched amAIz – a Gen AI framework for the telco industry. The solution includes templated use cases, as well as tooling and infrastructure.
Featured use cases for network operations include:
• Intelligent Networking Suiteservice design acceleration with enhanced, context-aware network function and service availability and solution generation capabilities
• Smart Operations - augmentation of expert capabilities with access to real-time experience data to accelerate decision-making, and achieve zero-touch operations
• Customer Engagement Platformcreation of network-aware solution proposal and architectural configuration, based on natural language and customer context inputs
• Cloud Services - rapid design and commissioning of cloud environments and optimisation of consumption FinOps models
• The amAIz solution also includes Copilot, which addresses telecom-specific challenges such as security, data privacy, scalability, and the complexity of data governance, focusing on a telco-specific taxonomy.
• Amdocs is also co-operating with NVIDIA to optimise large language models (LLMs) to speed adoption of generative AI applications in the telco sector. The companies said they would customise enterprise-grade LLMs running on NVIDIA accelerated computing as part of the amAIz framework.
Amdocs will use NVIDIA DGX Cloud AI supercomputing and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software to support service providers as they use generative AI applications.
However, even as the service providers start to use generative AI solutions, they face several challenges in benefitting from the technology.
Not an easy journey ahead of TELCOS will allocate a part of their IT budgets over the next 18 months to generative AI
To begin with, Gen AI solutions require large amounts of data to train and operate. While telcos are customer-facing and have access to large amounts of data, this is not usually easily accessible because of siloed systems and issues pertaining to data privacy. As per a recent TM Forum survey, privacy and security, followed by lack of truth function and legal implications of using public data, are the biggest concerns for service providers in using Gen AI.
“A key issue in leveraging generative AI is the availability of the data. The legacy telco systems are not designed to collate data from several sources, which is likely to impact the data quality and in turn, the effectiveness of AI solutions. The telcos also need to ensure data security and privacy while complying with the regulations,” said Gareth Owen, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research.
In addition, most service providers continue to use legacy systems, which makes it tough to integrate Gen AI solutions. Another significant challenge is the lack of talent. The telcos will need to train and reskill the existing workforce to acquire the required skillsets for Gen AI. Telcos are not known to have a culture of innovation, making it tough for them to attract the best available talent.
70% £ £ £ £ £ £ £
“Omdia believes that Gen AI will help telcos innovate, differentiate, and become more cost-efficient. However, the focus should not be on replacing employees and entire processes with fully automated and autonomous bots. Instead, a more selective approach is needed to maximise the benefits of Gen AI while reducing the risk of manipulation and damage caused by uncontrolled machine learning. Going forward, telcos and their partners could focus more on developing industry and use case-specific LLMs that can be integrated into holistic solutions for their enterprise clients,” says Olah of Omdia.
There is little doubt that the adoption of Gen AI-based solutions promises to help telcos ensure superior customer service and improved operational efficiency. The next few months will see several announcements by the vendors and telcos about the emergence of new use cases as well as about increased usage to gain new competencies. At the same time, the industry needs to address the challenges to maximise the gains of the technology.
“The focus should not be on replacing employees and entire processes with fully automated and autonomous bots. Instead, a more selective approach is needed.”
Driven by the Modi government, India has a stated policy goal to deliver 5G networks that use technology made in India. The aim, as Antony Savvas outlines, is not only to help boost the Indian economy, but to gain tighter control over the country’s communications infrastructure supply chain amidst geopolitical uncertainties in the world.
The government’s so-called ‘Make in India’ strategy has driven local operators like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel to roll out 5G networks using what they pronounce as “indigenous” technology. It’s perhaps no surprise that India’s government is keen on the 5G progress, as a GSMA Intelligence report found that 5G could benefit the Indian economy by $455 billion between 2023 and 2040.
The government has claimed that India’s has become the fastest 5G rollout in the world, with Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel adding 2,000 base tower stations (BTSs) a week, since deployments began in late 2022. Jio’s target was for pan-India coverage by the end of 2023. Airtel’s was to reach the same target by March 2024.
Speaking in November 2023, minister of State for Communications, Devisinh Chauhan said that 5G networks had been rolled out in 738 districts across the country, and a total of 394,298 base stations installed - with around 100 million subscribers using 5G services.
However, not all operators have met with equal 5G success. While Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have forged ahead,
in January 2024, the Department of Telecommunications sent notices to Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Adani Data Networks asking for an explanation as to why both have failed to meet the minimum rollout obligations stipulated on 5G licenses. Vi had previously confirmed that it would not meet rollout obligations in 15 of 17 spectrum circles it had purchased.
Airtel said in February 2024 that it had about 65 million 5G users, with 5G smartphones accounting for about 15% of its overall smartphone base. It expects that to increase to 255 million by 2025.
Ericsson’s annual Mobility Report claimed that India has adopted 5G faster than other early global adopters, in terms of active engagement with digital apps and services, including streaming, gaming, and augmented reality.
The Report said that 5G subscriptions in India are expected to reach around 690 million by the end of 2028.
One aspect to bear in mind when talking about 5G adoption is that Indian operators do not intend to charge a premium for 5G.
At the recently held India Mobile Congress (IMC), Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister for electronics and information technology, claimed that nearly 80% of the telecom equipment used in the roll out of 5G in his country had been made in India. Vaishnaw was aiming to have 70,000 Make in India 5G towers in operation in the country by the end of last year.
India’s HFCL is just one domestic company getting behind the effort. At the IMC event, the company launched a wide range of next-gen connectivity products for both the domestic and international markets.
These included 5G FWA (fixed wireless access) CPE (customer premise equipment) products, IP MPLS routers, 2 Gbps UBR (unlicensed band radio) systems, and 1728 high-fibre-count IBR (intermittently bonded ribbon) optical fibre cable.
The indoor and outdoor 5G FWA CPE products are designed to accelerate wireless broadband penetration in both urban and rural areas, and will help bridge the “last-mile connectivity challenge” in key global markets, says the vendor. They support both 5G SA (standalone) and NSA (non-standalone - a mixture of 4G and 5G technologies) networks across multiple Sub-6 GHz and mmWave frequency bands.
“To address the requirements of countries to fast track digital transformation by building a robust 5G network infrastructure, we launched our comprehensive ensemble of next-gen technologies,” says Mahendra Nahata, managing director of HFCL. “We aim to play a crucial role in deploying highspeed broadband networks and offer last-mile connectivity across India and key global markets.”
Not all Make In India wins are about 5G. Indian vendor Tejas won a $900 million order from government-owned operator BSNL to supply 4G equipment for 100,000 sites in the operator’s network, in a project to be completed by the end of 2024.
Tejas’s owner Tata Group sees the opportunity to become a vendor of telecoms equipment and services, bundling its range of businesses – Tele Business Services, Elxsi, Tejas Networks, Saankhya Labs and Tata Communications – into an overall offering. TCS has now set up two new business units to address telecom and 5G opportunities. A network solutions and services (NSS) unit is to work on mobile product engineering, intelligent networks, network virtualisation, automation and 5G services. The other unit, called cognitive enterprise network (CEN), will reportedly offer “intelligent” network management solutions.
As well as the BSNL deal, Tata has also has a partnership with Bharti Airtel to develop 5G solutions compatible with Open RAN specifications.
Reliance Jio’s owner Jio Platforms itself has created a major technology business unit that includes network equipment and software that formed its own 5G technology stack, formed from internal R&D and the previous acquisition of companies such as Radisys and Mimosa Networks. Jio now plans to offer this stack commercially to other operators. One initiative is the launch of Jio Brain, and AI platform that is aimed at integrating Machine Learning into telco networks.
In a LinkedIn post announcing the launch, Aayush Bhatnagar, senior vice president of Jio Platforms said, “Jio Brain will help create new 5G services, transform enterprises, optimise networks, as well as set the stage for 6G development - where ML is a key capability.”
Operators in India are now promising to export their speedily deployed home network mobile technology stacks to other markets. And India’s IT services companies are supporting the homegrown 5G kit as well.
Global services giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), for instance, is already selling 5G radios manufactured by Indian firm Tejas Networks in both the Indian and international markets. Such equipment can potentially be used in the US and European markets, where governments have ordered that Huawei’s equipment be ripped out of operator networks, as the Chinese provider’s kit is seen as a potential spying backdoor for China’s government – something Huawei has consistently and strongly denied.
Through the India government’s Production-Linked Incentive Scheme, multiple global companies have also been approved to support the Make in India initiative. As a result, they have started to design and manufacture new systems in India to supply equipment to domestic and global markets. Such companies operate under the “indigenously designed and manufactured” label, and are helping to export 5G mobile kit to over 70 countries.
Sweden-headquartered Ericsson, for example, has scaled up its Indian production capacity and operations with its partner Jabil in Pune, to meet the needs of 5G network deployments in India. That pair manufacture equipment that includes 5G radios, RAN Compute platforms and microwave products.
While the first wave of 5G in India has been deployed using traditional integrated solutions, the Indian and US governments have collaborated on a roadmap to accelerate Open RAN adoption - the US-India OpenRAN Acceleration Roadmap.
The roadmap follows a collaboration between India’s Bharat 6G Alliance and US-based NextG Alliance to collaborate in the fields of open RAN and research in 5G and 6G.
“A 5G Open RAN pilot in a leading Indian telecom operator will be undertaken by a US Open RAN manufacturer before field deployment,” a joint statement by the White House said.
Nokia is expanding its existing Indian 5G manufacturing capabilities too. In Chennai, the Finland-headquartered firm manufactures 5G NR (New Radio) and 5G Massive MIMO (massive multiple-input multiple-output) equipment.
“Our R&D centre in Bangalore is playing a key role in developing a local ecosystem partnership to develop 5G use-cases,” adds Nokia.
In addition, US-based Mavenir, a leading proponent of Open RAN technology, is now manufacturing radios in India, after announcing it was backing Make in India.
The Production Linked Incentive Scheme has led to a major place within Indian networks for western vendors –which some may see as undermining the “native Indian 5G” messaging.
Ericsson and Nokia have both signed major, multi-year, billion dollar deals with Reliance Jio to supply 5G network equipment and software. Ericsson’s deal is worth $2.1 billion to roll out 5G SA in the country. Nokia’s is worth $1.7 billion. Samsung, which was Jio’s main 4G supplier, also remains a part of its 5G efforts.
India’s government is also aiming to be a major contributor to 6G technology and manufacturing by 2030, when the first 6G commercial networks are expected to be ready.
In line with this, Ericsson has announced the launch of its “India 6G” programme, with the establishment of a 6G research team at its well established Chennai research and development centre.
To support the wider India-based communications industry in its 6G development efforts, last year, the Indian government launched the Bharat 6G Alliance (B6GA). The primary objective of B6GA, says the government, is to understand the business and
societal needs of 6G beyond technology requirements, foster consensus on these needs, and promote “high-impact” open research and development initiatives.
The
Incentive Scheme has led to a major place within Indian networks for western vendors.
B6GA aims to bring together Indian startups, companies, and the manufacturing ecosystem to establish consortia that drive the design, development and deployment of 6G technologies in India.
TO ENABLE India to become a leading global supplier of IP, products and solutions of affordable 5G and 6G and other future telecom solutions;
TO DEPLOY 6G technologies to act as a powerful force multiplier for India by 2030;
TO SUPPORT and energise Indian participation in standard development organisations;
TO ADDRESS India’s priorities for contribution to 6G and other future technology-related global standards, deployments, products, operations and services;
B6GA is very much part of Make in India, with B6GA aiming to facilitate market access for Indian telecom technology products and services.
“By accelerating standards-related patent creation within the country and actively contributing to international standardisation organisations, such as 3GPP and ITU, B6GA seeks to position India at the forefront of 6G innovation,” the government says.
A Telecom Technology Development Fund (TTDF), which is part of the scheme, will give grants to Indian entities to “encourage and induct indigenous technologies tailor-made to meet domestic needs”.
But taking all these initiatives into account, India may well be facing competition in the “made at home” arena when it comes to communications systems. In 2022, the US government launched the CHIPS and Science Act, which involved investing almost $53 billion in domestic US semiconductor manufacturing.
Part of the Biden administration’s ongoing $2 trillion dollar infrastructure plan, the funding for new US chip production aims to improve national security by decreasing the country’s reliance on foreign countries for chip supply. Before the Act, the US only produced 12% of the world’s chips, meaning domestic technology firms were dependant on international manufacturers, primarily based in Asia.
And, following this initiative, the US government recently announced its Supply Chain Resilience initiative covering secure manufacturing capacity, smart factories, energy supply and other areas.
Adil Kidwai, vice president and head of product at 5G chip startup EdgeQ, said of the latest US government domestic production effort: “As edge devices take shape, efficiency and cost effectiveness from 5G and artificial intelligence will enhance the productivity and security of the manufacturing systems that are critical for maintaining domestic supply chains.”
He also believes the initiative will result in devices that are “cheaper, easier to install, and simpler to upgrade”, giving US manufacturers a “leg up” over
TO PROMOTE the ecosystem for research, design, prototyping, development, proof of concept testing, IPR creation, field testing, security, certification and manufacturing of telecom products, end-to-end Solutions, Use-cases, Pilots etc
TO DEVELOP recommendations for Bharat 6G Vision implementation readiness in India;
Last year, the Indian government launched the Bharat 6G Alliance.
competitors in China and India.
“5G and AI will become intertwined in the smart factory of the future, and merging these complementary technologies at the edge will unearth new use cases, new service values, and efficiencies that will result from digitising physical assets,” says Kidwai.
While today companies internationally still look towards China or India for their manufacturing needs, due to technical efficiency and lower costs, Kidwai believes that when 5G and AI is combined, and embedded into US manufacturing, it will enable the US to better compete through leveraging smart robotics and automation, and becoming less reliant on expensive manual labour.
If successful, this model will no doubt be copied by other Western countries, keen to wean their economies off Asian technology production capacity and prowess.
Open RAN got one of its most recent greenfield launches with the opening of 1&1’s network for commercial services in Germany. The network, which is being integrated by Rakuten Symphony, is still fairly small, and will launch with a roaming agreement with Telefonica, before switching to a roaming agreement with Vodafone in mid 2024.
The operator said that it has a few hundred sites that are ready for operation, but it is thought at launch there may be about 100 that are live.
A release from 1&1 said that there are products and services from over 80 companies involved in the network. As well as acting as system integrator, Rakuten Symphony is providing the cloud and vRAN platform. Mavenir is providing the core network, via its cloud-native functions. 1&1 is building out a distributed edge cloud network to host the RAN software and distributed core functionsit says it will eventually be located in 500 edge cloud sites.
AT&T really shook things up at the start of December 2023 by giving Ericsson a five year run at its RAN, in a deal worth up to $14 billion. It said that the Ericsson investment would follow Open RAN principles, name checking other vendors involved in the RAN refresh as Fujitsu, Dell and Intel. Whilst a price commitment was no doubt key, just as key seems to have been that AT&T judged this was the moment to extract a clear commitment and action from Ericsson to open up interfaces in the RAN, enabling AT&T to move to a RAN that has the efficiencies of being automated, operated and managed as a single system, but that harvests technology from multiple vendors.
AT&T CEO John Stankey said, “With the slowdown in the vendor markets, we were able to step back and say, ‘What can we do to get an opportunistic agreement where we can drive vendors into a position to move more aggressively on O-RAN to position us long term?’”
Stankey said that in this instance “long term” means “whenever the next big investment cycle comes.”
“We stepped back, looked at it and said, this was an opportunity for us to do that [move to a more open platform in the RAN]. And we had two very good suppliers.
They both did good work for us. They both had really good equipment. We stepped back and said, how can we get to the most modernised network that gets the most amount of traffic across open -- potentially open -- interfaces. And it was this path that we chose with Ericsson.”
That’s an interesting self-correction there. From “open” to “potentially open” interfaces. Stankey is acknowledging that this contract isn’t about AT&T moving day one to Open RAN, it’s about leveraging a moment of weakness in its suppliers to extract a commitment to open interfaces that in time, AT&T will be in a position to exploit to introduce new vendor innovation. In return, Ericsson gets a five year commitment to one of the biggest RAN deals in its history.
And indeed in the official announcement AT&T made it plain that the initial work Ericsson does will see mostly an all-Ericsson RAN, with perhaps some attached RUs from Fujitsu.
Fujitsu, by the way, has confirmed to TMN that it will be delivering RUs to the operator. “In order to support the acceleration of Open RAN in AT&T’s network, Fujitsu will initially be delivering a series of O-RAN compliant radios to address their entire spectrum holding. More details will be provided in the near future.”
Deutsche Telekom said that it plans to have more than 3,000 ORAN-compatible antenna locations by the end of 2026. The operator currently has 80,000 5G antennas in its network, and wants to expand coverage from 96% of the population to 99% by 2025. That would seem to indicate that by 2026 about 5% of its antennas might be “O-RAN compatible”. Some of the newest O-RAN compatible sites are now live in a “cluster” in Neubrandenburg – where DT formerly held pilot trials in the location it called “O-RAN Town”. In these sites Nokia is
supplying its baseband unit, connected to Fujitsu RUs.
DT and Nokia announced an agreement in February 2023 for Nokia to re-enter its RAN by acting as lead vendor for sites built with open interfaces between the RU and DU-CU baseband. The confirmation that an unknown number of sites are now live is the first public fruit of that announcement.
Although Nokia has confirmed to TMN that this deployment uses Nokia’s own baseband unit and also Nokia’s own management software, a press release from the companies said that Nokia had committed to “explore O-RAN technology around Cloud RAN, 3rd party CaaS, RIC, SMO, and energy efficiency”.
Nokia’s strategy for an open Cloud RAN is named AnyRAN, which sees it put its low layer DU processing as a plug-in for commercial servers from different partners. The Neubrandenburg deployment, however, is based on Nokia’s own unit and hardware, TMN understands.
DT already had some sites live in its O-RAN Town using Mavenir, Dell Technologies, Intel, NEC and Fujitsu.
In the same February announcement, DT said it would be working with Mavenir to drive mMIMO Open RAN deployments in Europe, excluding Germany. There has been no public update on that deployment since.
In 2023 DISH Wireless launched Samsungsupported sites for the DISH 5G network, marking the beginning of Samsung’s role in the operator’s nation-wide rollout. With Samsung supplying an initial shipment of 24,000 Open RAN-compliant radios and 5G vRAN software solutions, the companies said they were accelerating the DISH network deployment across the U.S. Mavenir, however, remains the vendor with the biggest number of vRAN sites active in the Dish network.
KDDI Corporation went live with a commercial MU-MIMO implementation with O-RAN compliant multivendor interoperability, and also said it was ready to scale-up Open vRAN in 2024. The operator is working with Samsung and Fujitsu to deploy vRAN sites in Osaka City.
For the new sites, KDDI updated the software of vRAN sites that it had first deployed in February 2022. Samsung’s vDU-vCUs are connected to Fujitsu radio units to support Multi-User MIMO, making this the world’s first commercial MU-MIMO implementation with O-RAN compliant multivendor interoperability.
In addition, KDDI constructed a Zero Touch Provisioning system to automate configuration tasks when the base stations start operating. The system automates the setup of servers and platforms from different vendors.
The operator said that on September 22 it had started the deployment and operation of OREX RAN and OREX SMO in its domestic 5G network, incorporating base station software from Fujitsu, a cloud platform from Wind River, hardware acceleration from NVIDIA, running on a COTS server with Intel processors.
A statement said, “Building on the operational experience they have accumulated within DOCOMO’s network, these companies plan to enhance OREX Open RAN services and expand their product combinations, striving to offer improved cost-effectiveness and reliability.”
Ericsson said that it was ready to take leadership in industrialising Open RAN, as it released details of an MoU to develop Open RAN-based Cloud RAN technology with Telefonica.
The companies said that they would “leverage existing 5G infrastructure to jointly test, deploy, and evolve Cloud RAN technology with trial deployments in Europe”. There were no further details on the date, scale and timing of those trials. But the reference to the “existing infrastructure” does suggest that the companies will be looking to connect Ericsson Cloud RAN to their already deployed RUs.
Ericsson said that it has over a million RUs already deployed that can support the version of the O-RAN fronthaul interface (NG-LLS) that it is backing to provide Massive MIMO functionality over an disaggreggated RU to DU interface.
At TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World event held in September in Copenhagen, Telefonica CTIO Enrique Blanco told an audience that Telefonica is “extremely close” to solving the technical challenges it has seen in centralising and virtualising the RAN baseband. At that time, he didn’t mention Ericsson - in fact he said that Rakuten, with whom Telefonica has had a strategic partnership, had been “key” to this.
“Open RAN it is one of our dreams,” Blanco said. “Close your eyes. What is going to happen with 6G deployment? Initially it will be using the spectrum of 5G - later on higher spectrum because of capacity. So we need to fully centralise all the baseband intelligence. We have been in a big effort across the industry with the Open RAN Alliance. We are extremely close trying to solve for the technical solution and Rakuten is key for us in this - and we cannot lose all the traction that we have in this and all the rest of the industry.”
“But Open RAN is sending the message that we need to fully virtualise and softwarise all the services that today have still some proprietary interfaces.”
This public reference, TMN understands, came as something of a surprise even to Rakuten executives at the event, even though the companies have been allied in a strategic partnership on Open RAN. Perhaps Blanco was being polite, as he was sharing a session with Rakuten Symphony Acting President Sharad Sriwastawa. In any event, despite Rakuten Symphony’s work in commercialising its cloud platform and vRAN software within an open architecture, Telefonica’s latest step into Open RAN is with Ericsson.
Telefonica’s priority, Blanco explained at DTW, is to have a softwarised, programmable network that would enable the operator to exploit new business models, creating more dynamic services for customers, and exploiting the network as a platform via network APIs. Open RAN sits as part of that cloud-based software evolution.
The announcement with Ericsson includes specific mention of evolving RAN automation and service management and automation using the O-RAN RIC platform and network APIs.
Blanco said that the operator is committed to evolving a cloud native network, and that it must move with velocity - “we cannot be years and years evolving and changing our infrastructure.”
Telus announced that its next phase of 5G expansion would include a significant Open RAN deployment. Again, it was Samsung that scored another Open RAN win, this with an existing customer.
Samsung was one of the vendors to win Telus’ 5G business in 2020 as the carrier moved away from Huawei. In early 2024 it announced that the operator will be are expanding their collaboration from greenfield (new builds) to brownfield (existing infrastructure) deployments Commercial deployment will begin in the first half of this year and a large-scale network rollout is expected to begin mid-2024.
Samsung told TMN:
“Yes, this is an expansion of our existing collaboration with TELUS starting with 5G in 2020. As a part of this next phase, Samsung will supply its O-RAN compliant vRAN 3.0 and O-RAN complaint radios. Through the introduction and use of vRAN, TELUS will have the ability to improve energy savings and optimise performance across its network.”
As a part of this next phase, Samsung will supply its O-RAN compliant vRAN 3.0 and O-RAN complaint radios.
The carrier told LightReading that it will be introducing a new RU vendor into the mix as it rolls out the Samsung deployment. Two out of five sectors at a massive MIMO enabled site will not be Samsung antennas. The carrier said it would be able to achieve this by adding “converters” to existing sites to translate from CPRI to open Fronthaul protocols. So although the expansion contract is good for Samsung, it also brings with it the possibility of losing out on contract value to third parties.
Samsug said in written comments to TMN:
“At Samsung, we believe that optionality is key and is the main benefit of Open RAN, which is why we’ve fostered a robust Open RAN and vRAN ecosystem. By mixing and matching the best of the best solutions from various partners, operators are empowered to deploy and optimise their network based on their specific demands. We are proud to meet operators like TELUS wherever they are on their deployment journey and create a path forward designed to achieve their unique goals.”
In early 2024 Verizon advanced its messaging around Open RAN by claiming that it had now deployed 130,000 O-RAN capable radio units, at 15,000 cell sites that have “O-RAN compliant” baseband units. The operator had tended to refer to its vRAN deployment as open vRAN, rather than O-RAN compliant, deploying its vRAN sites as single vendor rollouts on a regional basis using mostly Samsung, or Ericsson.
Now it said that it is a “leader” in driving virtualised and open RAN, and said, “The addition of this new O-RAN capable equipment underscores Verizon’s commitment to driving O-RAN standards and technology in the industry.”
“Verizon is fully supportive of O-RAN technology and is focused on commercialising an operationally sound O-RAN architecture,” said Adam Koeppe, SVP of Technology Planning at Verizon. “Our commitment to developing O-RAN standards and to deploying compliant equipment in our active Radio Access Network is helping to drive the industry forward which will result in a variety of tangible benefits for our customers who expect leading-edge technology from Verizon.”
Early in 2019 Verizon announced the virtualisation of the core network with a cloud-native, containerised architecture. In 2020, it announced that the achievement of fully virtualised baseband functions – the heaviest portion of computing on the Radio Access Network. Verizon has been aggressively deploying that solution throughout the network.
This creates the foundation for O-RAN, it said, as its vRAN efforts run in parallel with and overlap Open RAN efforts. In 2023, analyst company Dell ‘Oro wrote that Verizon “is ordering 7.2x compatible radios from one of its vendors, but the carrier is waiting to fully deploy open RAN.”
Vodafone said again that its global RAN site tender, due as its current contracts end in March 2025, will see 30% of its 170,000 global sites be Open RAN compliant. Vodafone’s Santiago Tenorio said, “We need a new contract for every market and every site. Even if the market stayed the same on single RAN at every site, we still need new contracts to keep on buying kit. So that’s a tender. And then once we have a tender we need to think of a strategy. Ours is still to introduce 30% of Open RAN. That would be a reasonable outcome: in some cases that will mean shuffling the allocation of the market to different players and in some cases it might stay the same.
“It’s obvious that we would make sure that every player has an incentive and a threat. It’s a natural thing to do – to make sure that every player has something to win and something to lose. 170k sites are up in the air. It’s a big bet and you need to drive competition. If you start with the allocations that vendors keep what they’ve got, you won’t get the best prices.”
Tenorio rejects the cynic’s view that by adopting this new interface, Ericsson networks can be badged Open RAN in name only and thereby solve the operator’s self-imposed Open RAN targets.
“What do we gain by that? We never started Open RAN for that. We started for optionality in the supply chain, so we need to get that. Yes it’s good news that Ericsson is going Open RAN and we hope
we can drive that to be as good as the one we are rolling out in the UK. But we need at least one if not two other alternatives ready.”
Tenorio adds that he is not taking a cycnical view of Ericsson’s commitment.
“I think Ericsson has plans and they’re firm. Some in the industry are still sceptical and try to read between the lines of what they say.
Time will tell. We will take it through the same process as we took the other ones. We’ll take it to the field, try solutions, look at the roadmap and try to improve that. And we can use our RFQ to try to crystallise commitments and improvements.”
One of the biggest changes in the Open RAN space has been the full blooded entry of Ericsson into supporting O-RAN specifications for the interface between the baseband (the DU-CU in O-RAN architecture) and the Radio Unit (RU).
It was in early 2022 that TMN first reported that Ericsson said it would commit to supporting a version of the Open Fronthaul interface that it said would deliver sufficient performance for massive MIMO units. There was already a category of fronthaul for mMIMO, known as Cat B. Ericsson, supported by others, proposed an alternative that placed more channel estimation processing (often called the equaliser) on the RU itself, rather than siting it at the DU.
This alternative came to be known as Uplink Performance Improvement (ULPI). In O-RAN specifications it is Cat B/Class A.
ULPI advocates said this would give better performance, and Ericsson itself said that it already had a million RUs deployed in the field that are hardware ready – i.e. they have the newer Ericsson Radio Silicon – to support the ULPI.
In February 2024 Ericsson said that seven new RUs that it will introduce over the next year or so are also all O-RAN compliant, also being “hardware ready”.
Johan Hultell, Global Head of Product Line Radio, told TMN, “Hardware-ready means that we can and will, over time, migrate to Open RAN interfaces. The remote radios rely on Cat A. For the massive MIMO radios, one of the keys for us is to have one interface that offers good performance, so there we are using Cat B/Class A.”
So how will that migration take place?
“The new radios coming on-line are hardware ready and so are a million of the installed base. It’s a software update, and it’s something we are currently working on. It’s a big part of the AT&T deal, where we are saying that they will deploy radios with our latest generation Asic across the board. But we are working on it. It will come over time.”
Once the upgrades are made, that would mean that an Ericsson RU could connect to a different vendor’s baseband. And it would also mean that compliant third party radios could connect to the Ericsson DU.
Ericsson confirmed as much to TMN.
“In principle, yes, the introduction of open fronthaul support in the Cloud RAN portfolio enables the integration of third-party radios after the specification is finalised and an interoperability and testing profile has been approved.
“The actual scope and timeline of such integration activities would be subject to customer discussions, factoring in cost to integrate, suitable radio partners, and use cases, as well as a setup for feature
testing and lifecycle management over time. As such, the date would be dependent on customer need and discussion.”
Santiago Tenorio, Network Architecture Director, Vodafone, said that in his opinion Ericsson “has a point” on the need for a new split, which splits uplink processing (call it an equaliser for shorthand) across the RU and DU. But he added that he still wants to be able to support all possible combinations of RU-DU.
“I think ending up with the equaliser in two places is a necessary compromise. I tend to agree with their position that is it better to have it on the RU than on the DU because it helps interoperability. If the equaliser is on the RU it gives you easier interoperability with the DU than if the equaliser is coming from a different function.”
Tenorio added, “Yes you can try and drive everyone to the same class category, but the most important thing is to make sure that the ecosystem works in all possible combinations - so the DU is ready to take on whatever category, whatever class.”
So even though Tenorio agrees with Ericsson, he would still look for support for other options?
“Yes because the situation is what it is today. You need to make sure all possible combinations work together and you’re not going to run into camps. That would be bad. What you have now is different choices, but the standard is making them all compatible. In simple terms imagine the RU
RAN partner, was another operator to offer support for Ericsson’s fronthaul choice.
Many voices are against ULPI but finally we are able to find a solution for a problem we were discussing for months.
“We are finally able to find a solution that is there. Many voices are against ULPI but finally we are able to find a solution and we need to be positive in this as we finally find a solution for a problem we were discussing for months.”
John Baker, SVP Business Development, Mavenir, said of the new interface, “At the end of the day it’s an edge case for Massive MIMO. Cat A and B are perfectly OK for normal radios and for Massive MIMO. So then do I put more cost in the radio or do I keep it in the baseband? In reality you want it in the baseband not in a radio at the top of a tower. I can see that they [Ericsson] can use it to delay things, but why would an operator want silicon in the tower for a fraction of -dB edge case performance?”
Baker leant on comments from Vodafone that stated that a Mavenir RU was showing “dramatically better” energy efficiency than anything it has seen from the big incumbent legacy RUs. If Ericsson does not support the eixsting Cat B from its DU, then operators deploying its Cloud RAN would be cutting themselves off from the “dramatically better” RU, Baker said.
has the equaliser, in that case you can skip the equaliser in the DU and then that’s it. So you can make two different classes work together by bypassing the functions that overlap. And it’s just an equaliser, it’s not a huge duplication of cost.”
Maite Aparicio, Head of Open RAN, Telefonica, which recently announced it would be working with Ericsson as a Cloud
“The Mavenir radio today is CAT B, as the Ericsson specification has not been implemented in our radio yet. Why would you cut off the opportunity to use a better radio just because Ericsson does not want to implement the interface? Pick another DU which could include Mavenir and problem solved.”
Parallel Wireless said that its vRAN stack could run on any general-purpose computing platform, including both ARM and Intel x86. It said it had redesigned is PHY layer software to decoupled DU software from specific SoC platformsallowing operators to select components tailored to their unique needs.
NTT DOCOMO SAID that its Open RAN integration ecosystem OREX will now provide services under three headingsOREX RAN, OREX SMO, and OREX Services.
OREX (previously known as OREC) is NTT DoCoMo’s attempt to commercialise the ecosystem blueprints it has assembled for Open RAN deployments. So it integratesand then provides a service to deploy - the hardware, cloud environment, vRAN and RU providers into set groupings that are intended to meet certain use cases.
OREX RAN, as it sounds, is where operators can go to get hold of different disaggregated base stations made up of combinations of the 13 existing vendors in the ecosystem.
DoCoMo also said that it has added seven new RU providers to OREX RAN. These are DENGYO, DKK, Fujitsu, HFR, Mavenir, NEC, and SOLiD.
OREX SMO provides O-RAN compliant Service Management & Orchestration, while OREX Services provides procurement, integration, deployment and operational support.
Its
Parallel Wireless announced the availability of its O-RAN compliant GreenRAN xApps Suite, powered by the Near Realtime RIC (Radio Intelligence Controller) Platform.
The xApps are MIMO Channel Shutdown and Layer Switch-off - both designed to optimise the network cluster power efficiency while maintaining QoE (Quality of Experience) in both uplink and downlink.
Parallel says the nrtRIC makes it easier to conserve power as user demands fluctuate. GreenRAN™ xApps connected over the E2 interface form a cluster view, allowing each site to respond to true demand in near real-time by managing users between cell and sites within the cluster, while maximising user experience and the layer shutdown. In addition, the xApps optimise the user MIMO configuration between MIMO 4x4 to MIMO 2x2 while maintaining UE (User Equipment) channel quality. The result is substantial energy savings compared to traditional solutions.
vRAN stack could run on any general-purpose computing platform, including both ARM and Intel x86.
The company is developing its Universal Spectrum Multiplier software, which can be integrated into a baseband but also on the O-RAN RIC platform. It has been mainly focussed on MU-MIMO (FDD and TDD) 4T4R – where Cohere has been able to show 1.5x to 2x improvement over the course of 3 trials in various 4G and 5G bands (on three continents) without any changes to radio or existing antennas. It was expecting to trial a Multi-G (programmable Layer 1 PHY) system in the field in early 2024. In addition to OFDM waveform, Cohere and partners will show multiple waveforms on the same silicon platform.
For now, Multi-G is Cohere’s major focus as it encompasses the capabilities of the USM, but also adds in waveform co-existence. The important work in Multi-G is the hardening of the system and architecting the MAC-PHY interface such that a Multi-G enabled FlexRAN subsystem can be adopted into the DU of all stack builders. We see a clear trend on the horizon that operators are seeking vRAN/O-RAN solutions but are also looking to acquire large blocks of function from single vendors. For example, the CU/DU, with a Multi-G powered DU, could be from one vendor while RU could be from another to simplify operations and troubleshooting ownership.
The company said “interest is high both around economics and rapidly adopting innovation via software”. The latest work from NGMN, ITU and others indicate that as we head towards 6G that the operator community desires some of 6G to be built on 5G foundation AND the ideal solution will entail a software update to move to 6G.
The benefits of O-RAN are substantial and include increased flexibility and lower ownership costs. However, O-RAN raises challenges for network design evolution and system integration. Capgemini’s focus is to provide accelerators, expertise, product development, integration, design, and deployment services for O-RAN as a full lifecycle engineering and R&D service provider.
Our network of engineers accelerate O-RAN product development through customisable, standards-based, pre-built software frameworks for centralised and distributed units of the radio network. Deep expertise from silicon, protocol development, cloud platforms, orchestration, and datadriven intelligent RAN platforms helps us accelerate O-RAN market readiness for network equipment providers.
In addition, we help telcos design, test, validate, deploy, and manage O-RAN, while our global 5G labs provide testing, validation, and interoperability of multi-vendor solutions. Capgemini works with several network equipment providers, test and measurement companies, semiconductor enterprises, hyperscalers, telcos, and leading innovators.
Today, we continue to help telcos worldwide design intelligent systems for smarter, more energy efficient, automated open networks, using an end-to-end approach that includes automation and orchestration.
O-RAN deployment has been slow in 2023, but is expected to pick-up in 2024. Several operators have committed to a portion of their network becoming OpenRAN. A significant part of Capgemini’s engagements continue to be with network equipment providers as we work towards developing the roadmap of O-RAN. Further development will bring advanced 5G features, new xApps/rApps, and enable automation at scale for building autonomous networks – which incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) use cases for Open-RAN coverage and capacity automation.
A key area of focus will be “running” O-RAN at scale. Telcos must leverage innovation to manage large scale O-RAN deployments, observability, day-1/day2 operations, digital twins of O-RAN instances, and beyond.
O-RAN is a key interest area across industries such as manufacturing, aerospace and defence, and beyond. Most of the roadmap development in the coming year is expected to come from the O-RAN-based private network, as well as industrial use cases including IT/OT convergence at the management plane, security, and orchestration layers.
Telcos are primarily purchasing O-RAN to drive multi-vendor RAN with the goal of benefiting from virtualisation and automation and seeing long-term TCO reduction. However, the economic benefits are only possible if deploymentat-scale is achieved, and too many design changes in the radio will affect these
Most of the roadmap development in the coming year is expected to come from the O-RAN-based private network.
plans. Performance is key, as is the ability to automate day-to-day operations and visibility of the network. Therefore, cost is a major factor.
NEW USE CASES - particularly the intelligent radio applications (xApps/ rApps) – show promise for possible differentiation by telcos with respect to their competition. Typically, applications are expected to come from developers.
If O-RAN must be developer friendly and is able to attract external innovation to the telecom world, then the telcos will have to enable “platformisation” and developer experience for a complex area like RAN. This area may take time but is the future of open radio networks.
O-RAN has undoubtedly changed the rules of telco RAN development. O-RAN Alliance and other industry bodies play a key role in enabling interoperability and collaboration across vendors. However, the diversity will be lost if the software companies are not given adequate chance to demonstrate their ‘product.’ Such companies can bring in value beyond the RAN itself, in areas such as data-driven automation, cloud native development, DevSecOps, and cloud platforms. Certain government and public sector initiatives are also involved that make the development of community labs possible. These labs enable a diverse set of companies – from large corporations to start-ups – to work together.
What’s further, O-RAN is an ecosystem comprised of many parts. Telcos will play a key role in helping build this ecosystem by deploying O-RAN and sharing their learnings so that the community learns from it. Without deployment, there can be no learning.
Finally, there must be a better outreach strategy towards application developers. This should include a better developer experience to attract application developers to build innovative apps on the disaggregated RAN.
Perhaps the most notable of Samsung’s releases is that it had got its vRAN software working on hardware based on an AMD SoC. This was another lab test that the Samsng basedband solution run on Supermicro servers based on AMD EPYC™ 8004 Series processors, in Wind River Studio Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform.
What’s important here? Well, Vodafone, which was a partner in this test, is a big Samsung customer for Open RAN, with an Intel-based setup so far going into operation in its Huawei replacement sites in the UK.
AMD is an attractive option to software players as the effort to port from Intel is minimal, both being x86 platforms. The Vodafone/Samsung trial showed that Supermicro was able to build a functioning server for the Samsung vRAN workloads. What we didn’t hear was how the server was accelerating the L1 workloads, which has also been a contentious issue for some in the industry (others are less religious about the inline/lookaside split).
For Samsung, there have operators where there has been a lot of activity coming into 2023, Verizon, Dish, Vodafone, DoCoMo and KDDI. In early 2024 it added Telus to that list.
It has tens of thousands of sites at Verizon that are vRAN and O-RAN capable, and its share in Dish is north of 15,000 sites. It also saw more activity in Europe in 2023, with announcements with Vodafone and Germany, with O2 Telefonica and Orange.
Alok Shah, vice president of network strategy, business development and marketing for Samsung Electronics America, said, “We feel that vRAN and traditional BBUs are already at feature and performance parity, but we want to continue to push the ball forward. We’re continuing to push forward the capacity of our SoC, and also add things like energy saving features.
“Our philosophy has always been that you really want to have multiple viable players in each layer of the vRAN. And so we’ve worked with a number of partners on that acceleration layer.
I think everything that’s been commercialised to date has been on an Intel platform starting with their Layer 1 Accelerator card, and then moving toward the recent demos and trials that we’ve done around the new Sapphire Rapids with integrated acceleration.
“That’s where I think a number of operators are looking to land - and we’re excited to support that. But we’re also working with Marvel on L1 acceleration and supporting that platform. We made a recent announcement with AMD related to CPU performance and they’ve got a very high performance CPU – EPYC.”
“The second area is around automation. We find it to be very, very important that orchestration and automation start to become a bigger part around implementation. We’ve done a lot of work with our cloud orchestration engine so that deployment speed can be much faster for operators. They can go from bare metal servers to having something up and running in hours across hundreds of sites and we think that’s an important step.”
Our philosophy has always been that you really want to have multiple viable players in each layer of the vRAN.
“The third category is in power consumption of RUs. Power consumption is very, very important at this stage, and so there’s a lot of work around leveraging Samsung silicon innovation, and leveraging software to drive that power consumption - using sleep modes and various types of intelligence on the DU side to help us to manage RU power.”
“The other I think is around getting more wideband with a single radio. There’s a lot of interesting innovation going around being able to expand from one band per radio to a wideband form factor. So there’s a radio that we have that support CBRS and C bands together. In Europe north of 400 MHz of bandwidth on one radio. Being able to put less equipment on the tower is very appealing for an operator and it has a positive effect on power consumption as well.”
This developer has introduced a new 64T64R radio, a CAT-B solution that it says it currently going through interoperability testing with a variety of DU-CU configurations which should be completed by mid 2024.
Amplitech told TMN, “Our engagement spans across various OpenRAN CU/DU vendors, as well as traditional vendors now mandated by MNOs to open up their fronthaul for interoperability. At AmpliTech Group, we prioritise providing high configurations to facilitate the transition to OpenRAN, ensuring compatibility with both OpenRAN small players and traditional vendors.
“Our in-house design centre and MMIC design capabilities allow us to tailor/ customise our 5G radio fronthaul (L1) according to vendor specifications, thus supporting the PHY layer. Consequently, our connections are established directly with operators or through vendors, depending on the specific requirements.
“We have completed Conformance & Validation-based testing and have brought our radio to the OTIC center for IOT-based testing with multiple CU/DU setups. In support of this OTIC BASE lab testing, we have established connections with several universities. As a result, multiple CU/ DU vendors have expressed interest in developing and customising their software to accommodate this configuration.
“We are dedicated to developing radios that are competitive in the market, and this is just the beginning. We aim to also develop ULPI (Class-A) and (CAT-B) radios to offer upgrade options. We are in communication with CU/DU vendors to support us in this endeavor.”
Benetel told TMN that 2023 has “seen significant growth” in the Private 5G units shipped. “We have seen opportunities go beyond the 1-3 units POC into 10-20 range for larger trials across multiple markets. Overall our volume was fairly from 2022 to 2023. For 2024, we expect a significant rise in volume, as our work with system integrators leads to larger programs in multiple countries.”
Where are you focussing product development efforts at the moment, and why?
Benetel is focussing on continuing to add features to our existing software deployed e.g. further increasing capability of the M-Plane, also adding more TDD patterns and a variety of lower bandwidths. From a product offerings point of view, we remain focussed on Split 7 radios and turning our attention to adding n48 (US 5G CBRS) and n79 for microcells.
A key item for an O-RU supplier is integration status with CU / DU software providers. We will continue to add new integration partners, as more and more major players consider offerings in the Private 5G space.
How would you assess market sentiment/traction for O-RUs. Who is buying, for what reasons, at what scale?
From a high level view, there are many discussions around Macrocells, as Operators continue to consider their roll-out plans. However, as a vendor with Enterprise and Microcell offerings, we remain focussed on short-term volume
opportunities focused in the area of Split 7 only. This does rule us out of some opportunities where a gNodeB provides the end customer with their basic connectivity need. The majority of our business is in countries where there is dedicated spectrum available for nontraditional operators at a cost effective licensing point. We welcome the increasing number of European countries that are rolling out such offerings.
Do you have any current frustrations with the market, or are there things that you would like to see happen that would accelerate adoption of Open RAN radio solutions?
1. FUNDING Neither traditional VCs nor Operators with VC arms have much desire to enable innovative companies in the Ecosystem. The issue that this open up is that if the key players in an ecosystem have no appetite, it raises questions for others only peripherally involved, as to what is the underlying issue. Like ourselves, I see many innovative companies having to manage our scaling ambitions due to low appetite from investors
2. THE USE OF THE TERM whitebox RU – by some organisations. It implies cheap, easy to get, products. While the reality is something different. A robust RU with excellent radio characteristics is a key element of a Radio Network. We often hear about the lack of Western Radios in the market. Also see Point 1 – if anyone can build, then why would you invest…….
3. UK DSIT FRANC & ONE competitions significantly raise the bar in end to end performance, improving the overall quality of solutions. We would like to see more Governments and international bodies driving such initiatives
Mavenir announced new OpenBeam massive MIMO RUs, powered by the Qualcomm QRU100 5G RAN platform. It introduced a low-power next-generation 32TRX mMIMO variant along with a highpower 32TRX AAU.
In addition to the current O-RAN 7.2b specification, the products are also engineered to support ULPI (Uplink Performance Improvement).
The 32TRX AAU low power model delivers 200W output power with 128 antenna elements at the lowest energy consumption. The solution is optimised for deployment in dense environments, driving faster installations and lower operational overheads.
32TRX AAU high power model is an AAU capable of delivering 320W output power and offering 192 antenna elements. This platform supports larger instantaneous bandwidth, while the output power extends coverage, making it ideal for RAN sharing deployments.
Paco Martin, Head of Open RAN at Vodafone Group: “We are pleased to see the broadening of Mavenir’s mMIMO portfolio with the addition of a low power, compact product fitting our single-operator and footprint-constrained sites, on top of the existing higher power leading solution. Further adoption of Qualcomm QRU100 5G RAN Platform keeps bringing high performance and power efficient Open RAN radios allowing us to deliver the best customer experience.”
