VT (00:24):
Open, intelligent, virtualized and fully interoperable. O RAN powered mobile networks will soon be serving billions of people around the world. The O-RAN ALLIANCE.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading (00:44):
Well hello and good morning everybody. Welcome to the O-RAN Alliance Summit at MWC 2025 I time that solo. I was at the back chatting and here we are already on the stage. It's terrific to see you all here. Thanks for coming. I'm really looking forward to the event. My name is Gabriel Brown. I'm an analyst with a firm called Heavy Reading. We're a team of independent analyst researchers focused on service provider networking and we're part of a much larger tech industry research firm called oir. I'm going to be your moderator and master of ceremonies for today. I'm really looking forward to the event. We have a terrific schedule with some great speakers and for another reason, I was lucky enough in 2019 MWC 2019 to moderate the operator panel, what I think was one of the first O-RAN ALLIANCE public events back held at that time on the Deutsche Telekom booth.

(01:39):
Now there's two links to this. We have a Deutsche Telekom who's now chair of the alliance itself, but also there's one person on that panel who is still on the agenda today. I'm not going to tell you who she is, but it should be pretty easy to spot with that big clue there that I just gave you. So let me grab the, we're already here. We have a terrific schedule, some great speakers. Before we get into it, two housekeeping notes. First of all, to everybody attending the live stream, welcome to the event. It's great to have you with us and then for everybody here in person now I'm going to have to move pretty quick through this agenda. I'm going to be strict on time. You can kind of thank me or forgive me later on. It's just the way it's going to have to be.

(02:29):
However, because we are all here, I always think the best thing about in-person is the chance for some discussion for some back and forth, some q and a. So time permitting. We're going to have a microphone and people in the audience who during the panel sessions will be running around. If you do have a question, I'd invite you to take it time permitting. My only ask really is that you are clear, concise and that you stick to topic. So with that, that really brings us to our opening keynote of the event, please joining me in giving a big welcome to Abdu Mud here, he's chair of the board of the OAN Alliance and also group CTO at Deutsche Telekom. Abdu, please come to the stage.

Abdurazak Mudesir, Deutsche Telekom (03:23):
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Gabriel. Good morning everyone here in the room and good morning to our audiences in the live stream. It's great to be here. A very, as always, hectic Mobile World Congress. I hear so many people complaining before we come, but then enjoying it so much that we can't wait to come back again. So it's been a very great start. Now just I have the privilege of addressing you today as the chairman of the OR alliance. So it'll be my first address. And first thing I would like to say is that Gabrielle mentioned today, Hey, we had in 2019 the first or alliance public event in Deutsche Telekom, and there's only one person that's in the panel. We shows that we've evolved. A lot has changed, but then the fundamental question is, has our mission changed and did it need to change?

(04:21):
And for me, it's very important that our mission remains as we laid it out in 2019, which is openness, intelligence, and virtualization. These are things that are fundamental in all the innovations that we speak about, be it in making the run more intelligent, using AI in every component as possible, but also making sure that we have the openness we need to be able to be nimble and faster to introduce innovations and to virtualize it and cloudified, maybe that has evolved cloudified to run in any form of compute as we require. That has been a transformation journey for open, intelligent, virtualized, and fully interoperable brand That has been our mission remains our mission and focus. Now, if we look at what have we been doing or an alliance has been leading the way for the industry in defining the foundation for AI adaptation in the run. Why do I say that? Think you all know this since the beginning. Realtime r non realtime break opening up the O one interface, allowing for independent management, making sure that intelligence is part of not just in the management plane, but into the scheduling and all the functionalities of run. This has been the focus of the ORAN Alliance and this sets the foundation for what we, the operator community or the wider vendor and ecosystem now pushes to use the opportunities that AI presents itself.

(06:20):
We set out to make sure that security in the run is a fundamental design principle. And this is something that a lot of work has been ongoing, and I'll get back to that, that there is also more to be done, but it still remains very important, even more important in today's era than we've seen it in the past because today AI gives you the capability to be much more sophisticated in creating also dangerous scenarios for our run and that we need to make sure that by design we are protected against and we evolved the architecture towards six G. And again, yes, that's a journey. That's something we work very closely with three gpp working together with three GPP for a global standard that puts openness intelligence at the center of its design principle and security is exactly what the role of the OR alliance will be working hand in hand with 3G PP.

(07:24):
This has been what has kept us busy in the last year and the membership is very strong and have been working in a lot of working groups. And what we've started now to also be more sharper on what are the focus areas for us this year. Now this is a cluster that you see. We spend quite a lot of time as a board of the ORAN Alliance and the chairs of the ECS to say what do we want to focus on with the aim, very clear aim of increasing the overall interoperability and performance to scale the entire commercial deployment. I think that's the space where we still need to grow. If we're not able to scale the commercial deployment, it will not be worth the entire effort. And that's why we really see the need to scale the commercial deployment and we see what do we need to do to close that cap.

(08:28):
And there are three areas as a cluster that I put in. There is a detailed plan being worked out exactly what are the milestones and what do we deliver until summer, but also until end of the year. The first and still remains a very important element of our key focus is the open front door, making sure that we have high performance open front door for everything, but also importantly for massive MIMO. And that is something that we will focus on this year and try to make sure that we have a deliverable that worth a commercial adaptation and second intelligence via mature R. There's a lot of work done in the rig area, but also develop the decoupled SMO and making sure that we are able to deploy vendor independent. And that is something which will enable us to integrate AI in the management plane in a very smooth way.

(09:31):
And that's critical for efficient operation and the speed of innovation that we require as an industry. Now last but most definitely not the least, is that advanced security assurance certification, zero trust network architecture. These are elements that we believe that we've been able to architect very good so far where we need to make sure that every working group adapts these guardrails and that it is by design secure. What we point out what for commercial deployment, these are our priorities. We believe with a bit more focus, making sure that we address the Deltas, the gaps that we have to allow for a mass commercial deployment. We'll be able to bring this alliance to the next level. And as an ecosystem we can make this happen. Why do I believe jointly the ORAN Alliance members are serving 4.5 billion customers worldwide? I mean, this is an amazing opportunity that's a significant portion of the entire world population and a significant portion of the entire world connected population. And that is an opportunity that I believe that we have in our hand. Let's make this opportunity count and I'm calling on all of us to make sure that we deliver on the specification that we need to deliver, but also accelerate the adaptation. Thank you very much. Have a great day.