Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (00:00):
We're going to move to next panel regional views on open ran activity and outlook. We have four terrific speakers joining us. If I could ask each of you to come to the stage right now. So we have, I'll tell you what we're going to do, do a little bit differently this time. This is to have everyone introduce themselves just so everybody in the audience know who's who. Let's start here with Ian at Attis. Ian please. Hi re, so

Iain Sharp, ATIS (00:43):
My name's Iain Sharp. I work for ATIS, the principal technologist. So ATIS is the North American organizational partner in 3G PP and we're a regional SDO as I guess we've recently become very involved in topics related to o ran through a couple of routes. One thing that many of you'll be aware of is that the US government, particularly NTIA, which is the White House, is promoting O RAN as a strategic technology to I guess diversify and improve the RAN market. And we've been creating what's called the minimum viable profile of Open ran and this is a profile of the open ran specs to meet the requirements of the North American operators to really deploy open, ran across the North American marketplace and to give developers a baseline for that. The other aspect that we're working on is to bring the O RAN specifications into North American regional standards by publishing them as ATIs standards. And I think this is interesting because this is the same thing that we do for three gpp. So this is bringing O ran into equivalent status to three GP for the North American marketplace. So that's really the focus of what we're doing in Open RAN right now and I think it's very relevant to the topic of this session.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (02:06):
Good stuff and i'll ask you in a moment to comment maybe on what we just heard, but just before we move on, just give us a feel for what's the kind of intensity of work on O ran within Attis and the community that you serve.

Iain Sharp, ATIS (02:17):
Yeah, I mean the MVP project has been very intense. So this was undertaken in less than a year and we had a lot of involvement and very detailed technical discussions from really all the players in North America bringing their technical experts. So it is a big topic and there's definite, I would say real commitment to the topic amongst our members.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (02:42):
Good stuff. Thank you. Yeah, let's introduce yourself and

Jan Ellsberger, ETSI (02:46):
Thank you very much Gabriel. Happy to be here. Pleasure to be here. Jan Ellsberger Director general of Etsi. I think we're here to discuss the regional views on open run activities and outlook. I think from an ETSI point of view, although we are European standards organization, one of the three, we are actually quite global in our activities. We have a global impact in everything we do. We have 900 members from 65 countries across five continents. So everything we do have a global aspect, we have a global participation in all this specification work that we're doing. And when it comes to O Ron, we have an corporation agreement with Oon Alliance. We have adopted seven of the O Ron specifications through the ETSI public of the PO process, public available specification process. That does not mean that we sort of rubber stamp those specifications. We are actually going through, looking through them, reviewing them in our technical committees, providing comments back to our on alliance and by that improving the quality of the work and also sort of helping our on the alliance to get a bit more global recognition of the specifications that has been developed.

(04:01):
So this is an ongoing process. I think it started in 2022 if I recall right, so before my term as director general. And I think it, it's sort of from an underly point of view that really helps to secure that we have a wider engagement from also the ETSI community of experts to help to improve the work of those specifications. So I think I stopped there as an introduction and then we can continue.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (04:32):
Sure. Okay, good stuff. Let's move on to Dr. Jung Kim from TTA.

DaeJung Kim, TTA (04:39):
Yeah. My name is DaeJung Kim working for TTA. TTA is South Korea, unique I-S-T-I-C-T Standardization development organization and also just like GNR TT is also three GP organization partners, one of the organization partners. Actually at the last year we have signed between the OR alliance and TT to adopt the OR specification. Today's I would like to explain the Korean or standardization and policy and r and d and industry activities nowadays. Thank you.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (05:38):
And from Japan we have, Shimada-san, please.

Shinya Shimada, MIC (05:43):
Thank you. Thank, let me first thank you for this opportunity. I believe that this is our first time to be here from the other government representative from the Japanese government. I really appreciate this opportunity to share our views about the open run and I want to share the current update of the governmental collaboration and the public private collaboration because I'm only one person from the government in this session and the Japanese government is make importance on the deployment of the open land, not only in the domestic market but also to the globally because we need to secure we to have secure, trusted and resilient network, especially by utilizing the benefit of the open run. And in Japanese government we specified the policy goal, the deployment of the support of the deployment of the open run globally, other national goal in aspect of the not only national security but also in the aspect from the tand of the economic security. We need to have a more NT supply chain and more vendor diversification. We are now tackling with this kind of policy gold under the collaboration with like-minded countries like us, Australia, UK and also with Korea. And I want to, so we did conducting some part project and globally. So in the letter I will introduce our current internship for creating the public private partnership in the open deployment.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (07:48):
Thank you. So Sha, let's stay with you in Japan for a moment. If I understood correctly, it's explicit government industrial policy to promote open ran in Japan for, I think you mentioned security and resiliency, but also if I understand to promote the business of Japanese tech companies exporting abroad. Is that correct?

Shinya Shimada, MIC (08:12):
Yeah, it's correct. But we don't seek this goal just for Japanese private sector but also the economic prosperity in our region, not only in the Pacific region but also in the globally. Well of course we more than welcome if the Japanese private sector gets the profit in the global market, but Japanese government doesn't think that this is the only one policy goal we would like to make more contribution to create secure and trusted and resilient and digital infrastructure situation is the globally. So we need to have a more public private partnership among the like-minded countries.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (09:04):
Okay, thank you.

(09:05):
Dr. DaeJung Kim. Could you tell us a bit about the O ran or open ran activity in Korea among your community, your members and contributors? What's going on? Is it from the outside, it looks like it's kind of a six G story largely, but please enlighten us.

DaeJung Kim, TTA (09:24):
Yeah, actually first I would like to talk about at the time of the 5G standardization At that time, at the beginning time of the 5G standardization. At that time the 3G PP some members wanted to propose to make some frontal interface became split the low layer split between the RU and D at that time. But 3G PP didn't make some work item And just at that time after that, around the 2019 at the time in Korea, early adoption, early deployment of the 5G, at the time the TTA members like SK Telecom and Katie and Korean operators wanted to make some initial spec for the front interface at that time TT make initial version of the frontal interface, some sort of initial or spec after the baby. That kind of moment is a critical moment for the establishment of the OR alliance. After that last year we made the MOO between the TT N alliance.

(10:56):
We need to seek this global harmonization in a global harmonization point of view. And also that from the last year Korea operators like SK Telecom and kt SK telecom is now aggressively investing or studying and some r and d project is in collaboration with 10 global manufacturers and also Korea Telecom nowadays is provide some pilot service in JE island and also Samsung. Something is also is in collaborate with the global operators and also Korea government. Last 2023 announced some open policy plan to promote, encourage or run specification. And also so many r and d project is now on progress in Korea. In Korea government funding to the Korean industry to encourage some study and facilitate the all and specification. Thank you.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (12:32):
Thank you. We're going to have some time for questions in a moment, so get all those ready and also microphone person as well. Thank you. Yeah, and I'm going to land this one on you because you are such a cultured and expert speaker. I'm sure you can handle it. One things, one of the things that occurs to me here is we're getting from the prior panel as well, we have lots of moving parts going on. So you have three GPP specifications, you have O ran coming in and essentially filling gaps is one way of putting it. And then you have all that coming back to ETSI to MIA and TTG, all these different agencies and ATIs. So we are going, it's almost from the outside it looks like we've got a situation of things going around in circles a bit. It's three GP, it's back out to Iran, it's back into the members that make up three gpp. It's kind of confusing. Is there some way of just maybe streamlining things a little bit? I dunno.

Jan Ellsberger, ETSI (13:27):
Yeah, I think I fully agree with you. It's a little bit fragmented at the moment. And then of course also if you sort of introduce the OAN specifications in all the regional specifications or standard bodies, you will create fragmentation. You have the risk of creating regional versions of the overall specifications. And I don't think that is beneficial from a global market point of view. If you look at the 3G PPP model, I mean that is very, very successful. I mean it's a partnership between the regional in different parts of the world. So China, Japan, South Korea, India, Europe and us. And I think that is really a successful model because then you made the commitment that you do the technical specification work in 3G PP and then you automatically transpose the results into the regional standards bodies and being issued as regional standards. And part of the 3G PPMU is that you commit that you're not going to make any changes to the 3G PPP specifications.

(14:33):
And I mean technology development is, and especially technology innovation, if you want to have the best technologies developed, it has to be a global effort. There is not one single region in the world that can be self-sufficient in any technology. So it has to be a global collaboration. And the 3G PPP model guarantees that is really a global joint effort to develop the best technology for mobile systems. And I think if O run would like to try to strive to get global standards and sort of a global effort, maybe that is the model to start to consider. So I think that would be my view on how to streamline this a bit and secure that we have a good setup.

Iain Sharp, ATIS (15:22):
Yeah,

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (15:23):
Ian?

Iain Sharp, ATIS (15:23):
Yeah, well I wanted to comment a little bit. I mean I guess if you look at this historically OAN came in with a quite disruptive mindset to try and do things in a different way to the way that 3G PP had worked and to I guess address what was seen as some incomplete aspects of what 3G PP had done. And I think they were quite successful actually in terms of taking a different approach and bringing new aspects like open source that maybe hadn't been well addressed in three gpp, but at the same time it's taken them a while to achieve the same quality of specification that 3G PP normally aspires to, let's put it that way. And I think it's only really now we're talking into the era of real multi-vendor interop for open ran that you are really seeing the focus in open ran shifting towards having very clearly defined specifications in a way that 3G PP would aspire to.

(16:23):
And I think that there is actually then we are in a convergence process between those two organizations in that sense in as much as I think they have much more common interest in the specification work than they used to. I think there is much clearer understanding of the role of open source from the three GPP side than they used to be. And I think that will feed into, for example, the workshop that Ulrich and other people have been talking about where perhaps we're going to have some kind of joint roadmap or at least a common understanding of a roadmap that maybe wasn't there at the beginning and is coming into play now.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (16:58):
I think that's what struck me from the panelists, the opportunity is to kind of get a little ahead rather than have two phases. It's actually a line whatever the terminology, I'm sure there's specific terms, but the work split was one term I had whatever that is to make sure that the timelines are somehow synchronized and seems like a pretty good way to look. Ian, the thing you just mentioned, I'll let you start but then Yanna will come down if the topics got legs on the very first panel of the day. We heard from David Kinsey from Meran software community, I dunno who is still here. I wonder if you could talk a bit about how the relationship between standards groups such as yourselves and open source development is working. Because certainly there's a technology is being developed in open source and kind of imported in, but there's different license requirements. S-L-A-E-P, I forget what he called it now. S-C-C-L-S-C-C-L, David can elaborate, I can't even remember what that means now, but standards, collaborations, copyright license standards, collaborations, copyright license for everyone who didn't hear put you on the spot and Y and worked out. Is that a good topic for me to ask you about? I suppose to start with,

Iain Sharp, ATIS (18:18):
I mean I don't know the specific license that's been produced in around lives, but perhaps I'll talk in general, right? I mean I think one of the things that's a major discontinuity compared to maybe where we were at the beginning of 5G is that more and more standards work is electronic deliverables that are designed to be built directly into software or can be consumed by software processes. And when I started the industry we were very much about editing text and now we're much more about editing machine readable formats. And I think that from my point of view, I guess as an SDO, a lot of the requirements there are about having the tools and the knowledge and indeed the licenses to allow those things to move forward because the structures that we have in place for producing text documents are not necessarily the best structures to producing XML or other machine readable things.

(19:19):
And I think all SDOs are really in the process of making that adaptation and we see that in three GP where there is definitely in the groups where it's relevant, there is definitely much more tooling and much more processed around those software type deliverables which then allow it to connect much more directly into the open source community. So I think that's where I see things going. Perhaps where there is a bit more of a gap is the feedback from the open source back into the standards process because I don't typically see a lot of open source developers sitting in standards development organizations, but they are definitely learning things that should really be fed back into the standards process. So how we connect the opposite direction, I'm not so sure and maybe that's where we need to be focusing our future efforts.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (20:07):
Before I come to Jan, it strikes me as quite a big ask for any SDO to take on board the idea of editing or implementing designing code versus text. I mean to someone who's outside of your world, you go into three gpp and I know a couple of people here, but it looks kind of archaic, right? There's spreadsheets, there's this, there's that, there's word documents which isn't really modern network technology production, not really, it seems like a big ask on you guys to actually skill up and tool up

Iain Sharp, ATIS (20:40):
And it's multidimensional and it's cultural and it's generational as well. I mean I think that in my ideal world I would require all standards, peak delegates to at least have some familiarity with the kind of GitHub type tools that software developers use and the kind of languages that software developers express requirements in. We are not there yet, but I think the people who are younger people coming into the standards process tend to have been trained much more in that set of tools and for them it's a much more natural thing to use. So I think that we will move in that direction, but maybe we need to have some training for people who have been longstanding people in the standard process as to how to get up to speed with that stuff. Maybe there's something, yeah, this is something that we could think about as SDOs.

Jan Ellsberger, ETSI (21:35):
Indeed. Yeah, and I think I fully agree with what you said Ian, but also to compliment a bit on that, I mean ET is maybe one step ahead in this because we have fully realized that in the modern world you do sort of normal text-based standards but you also have to compliment that with software development under what license et cetera. That is different from case to case and you also have to compliment that in drop testing. And in ETSI we actually a little bit unique as an STO because we offer all those three components in our standardization process. So we do the normal tech standards, we have software development groups that are developing open source of software development for specific features to demonstrate the implementability of the standard and then we also have a very big plaque test program where you can get together and do in drop testing of different implementations of the standard to really demonstrate that the standard is in droppable.

(22:40):
And we see that sort of when we now looking in the cybersecurity space and cyber resilience standardization that we're doing, we have those requirements coming from the European Commission that we have to include open source and software development as part of the standardization process. So we are fully meeting that demand and we have those capabilities in-house with all the tooling and work methods, et cetera. So I think we are already working in this direction. We also have a very good collaboration with Linux Foundation where we do joint work and also we have sort of discussions on how to do joint work in relation to cyber resilience act because we have to do the operating system for those type of implementations and the lean foundation will most likely sort of provide the software components to that. So

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (23:33):
That's a good example of a formation.

Jan Ellsberger, ETSI (23:35):
It's a good example. So we are moving in that direction and ETSI have all the tools in place.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (23:39):
Yeah. Okay. Well before we move down, I wonder if we might bring David in, I apologize, I'm sort of jumping on you in the audience, but there's a microphone right behind you if you fancy it. I wondered if either give us some sort of global comments on what you've heard or even specifically address the point that Ian at ATIs made about how software developers can feedback this doesn't work, how this is suspect it doesn't work or how they can now actually be part of their ongoing development.

Audience Question #1 (David Kinsey, AT&T) (24:09):
We discussed this in o ran about how do you do the feedback loop that it doesn't work without a feedback loop. The whole and purpose of being able to modify the SDOs output is because if you find a bug, the software doesn't wait for the whole standards revolution to come around for the fix they need to do it so that their build will move forward. And so it allows for that correction. It also in o we do a lot of work simultaneous with the specification in order to prove that the specification is actually implementable and sometimes that has actually helped us with the actual specification process in identifying gaps early on in the specification development. So the problem is though is that you need to maintain IPR the ips that go in because we have Fran license and stuff like that that are associated with that. So the way it works is that when a bug or defects is found, the individual companies that are members of the SDO need to come back with a contribution following the process of the SDO for that contribution. It's usually very straightforward because it's an error correction and those are the easiest ones to submit and so it's putting that back into the pipeline follows the normal process, therefore also obeying all IPR rules that are within the SDO. Okay,

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (25:35):
Kind of like a bug fix when you want to get involved in

Audience Question #1 (David Kinsey, AT&T) (25:38):
That's right.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (25:39):
A project gets started,

Audience Question #1 (David Kinsey, AT&T) (25:40):
You want to get it started, you want to get it done, but at the same time to get it into the standard after it gets out in the standard you have to do a true up in the open source. Every release you do a true up to the latest release. If your bug wasn't fixed but it was changed, you have to readapt or if it wasn't fixed due to whatever, then you have to pull it forward in order to keep moving the software forward unless it's been rejected in which case then now it's a whole different problem.

Iain Sharp, ATIS (26:07):
Yeah, okay. The only comment I'd make on that, and maybe this is just my personal experience, is sometimes software groups can kind of fix an interoperability problem between themselves so that they think that's solved the problem and they don't necessarily always report it back to the sort of SDO. And I think creating that mindset and the culture where we report these back to the SDO is really important.

Audience Question #1 (David Kinsey, AT&T) (26:30):
The problem with that becomes then interoperability and conformance. If one software comes up with a solution that is deviant from it, then unless everybody adopts the deviance, then you don't have interoperability. So the right mindset is get it corrected into the standard, get it published as an actual artifact consumable by them so they can take it without modification. The goal is without modification, therefore everybody is developing to the same standard and therefore we should have interoperability ability

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (27:04):
Very well made points. Shi sand, do you want to have any thoughts from your side on how you are adapting in your agencies?

Shinya Shimada, MIC (27:13):
Actually I feel like I just only one person outside of the specification but so let me introduce our incentive of the funding and the incentive of other activity with the international collaboration. So can I

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (27:34):
Yeah, so you are going to jump ahead and talk about your funding and incentives for vendors. So

Shinya Shimada, MIC (27:40):
We are

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (27:42):
Hold that thought, we'll come back to that but let's just see if Dr. Kim, do you have any thoughts on this topic of how open source development can work more elegantly with standards development?

DaeJung Kim, TTA (27:59):
Actually in my memory in 10 years ago we on M two M on MT m standardization at that time we discussed that kinds of relationship between the open source and standardization but fully understand what you had good points about that open spec is so we need to consider the kinds of issues in stage of standardization. Actually TT is also now considering the kind of issue internally but already the, IT made some software working group but T TT is now is on the stage where and we needed to solve the kinds of problem in the future. Thank you.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (28:57):
Okay, so before we move on, I'm just going to see if anyone has a question or comment. The person I'm looking at, I'm going to just ask Adrian Grace to comment a little bit in the back there if you wouldn't mind Adrian, just because you have a lot of experience in the SDO world, just give us your thoughts from your long experience. Have you seen this change? Well I guess since you left, since you left ETSI and three gpp really just give us your thoughts on the topic overall

Audience Question #2 (Adrian Scrase, former ETSI) (29:33):
On the topic of software,

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (29:35):
Open source software development and how that interfaces with standards.

Audience Question #2 (Adrian Scrase, former ETSI) (29:39):
First of all, thank you for putting me on the spot. I mean we've lived through many years of this and certainly from an ETSI point of view, I'd echo what Jan has said that for a number of years now we've been puzzling with this whole issue of how do you work from standards to software and back again. And I think we've made tremendous progress in that direction. I think we understand the complexity of it. It's now down to the willingness of the communities to actually make it work. So I think even with the software copyright licenses, I think we've got so much experience now, at least from an ETSI point of view, we know how to address that issue and again, it's down to the community. If they want to make it work, it will work. But coming back to some of the earlier points on this panel, I think this is very much related to the fragmentation discussion and I do have my own personal concerns that as you rightly said, Gabriel work is being done in different places.

(30:37):
It's being developed in different places. Software components might be developed in different places. How can we be sure that when it all comes together it will actually work in an interoperable way, but all credit to industry that's actually trying to make this work. Maybe we were expecting things to happen a little quicker, but industrial reality is that we're working at the pace we can work at. But I think six G gives you a real opportunity to try and bring some of this together in a much more coherent way from both an organizational point of view and from a technical point of view.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (31:14):
Okay, thank you. Adrian, sorry to put you on the spot but I knew you'd handled it with a plum. Was the gentleman there next to you? Did you have a comment or as being one of the

Audience Question #3 (31:23):
Yeah, so I just had a question. So with the movement to more of the network function virtualization and the ization of network functions, how do you see methods like fuzz testing playing into probably this forwards and backwards? So fuzz testing just as a very popular penetration and testing method to essentially just determine what are the edge cases where implementations don't work? Do you see this being a part of testing and integration in the future for six G or familiar with?

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (31:59):
Good question. I'm going to learn that one on Ian to deal with this. Think it's a little bit the same question, isn't it? In a way,

Iain Sharp, ATIS (32:05):
I think first testing is a known technique for trying to find security vulnerabilities.

(32:11):
I kind of agree with the point that actually Rob Soley from at and t made in his comments in the earlier panel that if you actually look at the way O ran is deployed, it's in a quite structured environment. So it's not necessarily exposed to all the same risks as for example, software that's going to sit on the public internet is. But I think as we increasingly bring together different combinations of software that we will have to introduce this much more, I guess skeptical view of security to call it that, where we really assume that we are dealing with actors that do not have good intentions where we try to integrate software. So I think it has a role but I think is from my point of view, it's in the details of how we specify the security piece.

Audience Question #3 (32:59):
Sure, I understand. I apologize for the redundancy again trying to graduate.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (33:05):
No worries, thanks. To be honest as well, when he said the young people in the industry, there aren't that many in the audience here, so I was kind of like thank you. Let's go. We've got four minutes left. Shi san, you had some input on funding and incentives of course that is certainly for smaller vendors but not only, it's a very important piece moving OAN on. Tell us what you're doing there in Japan then in terms of supporting the industry.

Shinya Shimada, MIC (33:34):
So from this session discussions on my main statement is very different from the others making their specification or something like that. But so we are now promoting open and deployment into the world. Currently ongoing collaboration is still ongoing. So after the, some government was changed. So for example the February savings, my prime minister Ishiba met the President Trump at Washington DC and there are other result of the Unjoin statement and that joint statement including the importance of the open run. So not only the US and Japan, the other countries still thinks their open deployment is very important policy goals. So we are conducting their funding to some pilot project, especially from the Japanese government. So we are especially focusing on their ASEAN countries. But so we already conducted the Philippines, Cambodia and Indonesia and the other Assan countries. We conducted the financial support of the pilot study pilot field trial in India, Kenya, Ukraine. So we are promoting the open by providing the financial support as a catalyst of the private sectors investment. But so this kind of funding not so popular so we want to let you know we are providing this kind of financial support with conducting the unanswered countries. So anyway, we are very taking importance on the cooperation with the private sectors. So I'm very happy to have further cooperation with the team here.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (35:56):
Thank you. Yeah, a good contribution in.

Iain Sharp, ATIS (35:58):
Yeah, I wanted to say, I mean obviously a lot of things are changing in the US when it comes to public issues, but at least in my understanding, the US funding for the wireless innovation fund and they have this notice of funding opportunity, the NOFO three coming out on increasing open RAN and software ization. I think that program seems to be surviving and continuing. So I think that we will also see similar to what we heard from Japan, really government support for private sector innovation related to open ran coming from the us.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (36:32):
Super interesting to see the links between industrial policy and all the rest of industry, whether that's standards or software development or whatever. It's quite an integrated picture. With that, we're going to close the session. Really, we've got one more after this, but before that please join me in thanking our four panelists.