Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:24):
Hello, you are watching the Open Ran Summit part of our year-Round DSP Leaders Coverage. I'm Guy Daniels and today's first discussion looks at Brownfield Open ran deployment strategies. Now initial open ran rollouts focused on greenfield sites, but the major opportunity lies with its use in existing Brownfield sites. So how are telcos approaching their deployment strategies and what trends are we starting to see? Well, I'm delighted to say that joining me on the program to answer these questions are Sushil Rawat, who is Director of RAN Strategy for TELUS. Randy Cox, VP Product Management at Wind River and Robert Curran, Consulting Analyst with Appledore Research. Hello everyone. It's good to see you all again. We have as usual lots to talk about today. Now, where are we actually in terms of Brownfield commercial deployments and if we look at environments first, where is the biggest interest currently? Is it urban? Is it rural? Is it closed campuses? Robert, perhaps I can come across to you first and you can share your views on what you are seeing.

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (01:48):
Yeah, thanks guy. Look, I think there's interest in all of the sectors that you've mentioned there, the urban infill densification, improving coverage in downtown areas, highly congested areas, that's one distinct application. We're seeing the rural inclusion as well, serving the underserved areas, that's important. Campus networks, industrial, inside factories, manufacturing buildings and so on, they're all important. Even seeing interest from potentially military applications as well. The interest is in getting mobile capabilities into places that it's not currently there without needing the same level of maybe commitment or long range strategy or procurement cycles that otherwise might be involved. So we're certainly seeing, I think, interest across the board. I don't think there's one standout from a Brownfield point of view. There's lots of ways in which you might be interested in using open run. Some of that's enforced from the environment, geopolitics and so on, but some of it is organic. Anything you want to experiment on, anything you want to try out and open Ran is certainly proving a popular option for that quick startup chance to experiment, try something different and see what results you can get from it.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (02:58):
Great. Thanks Robert. Pretty comprehensive then. sel, let's come across to you first. Lemme go then we'll hear Randy's views, but Sushil, what are you seeing from your community and also what are you doing yourself at telus?

Sushil Rawat, TELUS (03:10):
So we have been seeing across the globe multiple operators doing open end trials and also getting into the deployment depending upon the use case and depending upon the strategy that they're adopting, the deployments are happening in various different geographies or different kind of network density.

(03:33):
For a brownfield operator who is doing this deployment, especially focused on 5G or with the modernization in their mind, they're probably looking at clusterization of the sites into rural areas to first check the feature parity, performance parity and everything and then expanding it.

(03:53):
We at TELUS, we have announced that we are going to do our open end deployment starting this August. We already have 10 15 sites already on air on open ran technology for the last three, four months now. And

(04:09):
we have started deploying open RAN in dense urban areas, pretty much a urban environment where we have highly loaded site, which gives us a real picture of how Open RAN is performing in terms of KPIs and customer experience and whatnot. And we've been pleasantly surprised to see how open ran is at par and in some aspects even better than traditional RAN technologies.

(04:38):
So very, very diverse deployment scenario based on the use case of an operator.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (04:45):
Very interesting. Thanks for those insights and updates. And Randy, what are you seeing from your partners? Where are they looking at deploying their brownfield? What environments are they focusing on when they go commercial?

Randy Cox, Wind River (05:01):
Yeah, I would say we don't really see any specific trends here really. It's really in number of types of environments. I think with the progress the industry's made in this technology, there's no limitations that would suggest it needs to be in a less intensive environment, one from another. The deployments where Wind River have footprint are in some of the most densely populated urban environments you can find places like Manhattan, New York or Tokyo. And now in big cities in Canada and the UK specifically as Suhil was mentioning in Telus, certainly the urban environments there we're seeing great performance. So I think this is needed everywhere and we're ready to be able to provide that from a technology perspective to the carriers around the world.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:55):
Great, thanks Randy. So it's obviously very versatile in terms of environments, but what about specific topologies and network configurations? Are we seeing clusters of open RAN being deployed in Brownfield or are we seeing it integrated with the more traditional RAN deployments? Sushil, let's come across to you first.

Sushil Rawat, TELUS (06:15):
Sure, I'll be happy to answer that. So approach of swapping a network or approach of deploying a new technology totally depends upon the motivation behind that change that operator is adopting. In case of our scenario, we have mandate from government of Canada to swap our incumbent vendor with a new technology. So for us, the deployment is very sporadic where it is not necessarily to be a cluster offite, we are going with a plan network upgrade process where we swap sites across the country. It is not part of any specific clusters or a clusterization approach. It is very sporadic. Also, we are going to adopt open RAN for technologies like in-building and small cells and whatnot. So very, very diverse kind of deployment in our case at least.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (07:12):
Okay, thanks. So it depends very much on business case and way around your planning strategy and the network as a whole. Randy, you were saying there's no observable big trends in terms of the environment of deploying Brownfield, but what about the topologies?

Randy Cox, Wind River (07:29):
Yeah, we see a mix of both clusters of open ran but also integrated specifically with traditional ran. And mainly because in open ran we are seeing carriers deploy all the gs, so 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G. And so in certain cases this can force a mix of traditional RAN as well as O ran example in Vodafone. You may have seen at MWC the side-by-side performance that they performed in ada real Spain between traditional and ran and the performance was as good or better than traditional from an O ran perspective. And we know that in Telus we've seen the same thing in that kind of environment. So this is proving to work whether it is in a clustered environment, topology or whether it's a mix if you will, or integrated as you've said.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (08:38):
Okay, thanks Randy. And finally Robert, are you witnessing the same from the research you're doing, the talks you are having with industry?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (08:46):
Yeah, I mean there's a kind of inevitability about the progress here. It's very clear the first few years in open ran a focus on parity, parity performance at a individual cell level and now it's clear there's enough evidence across the industry that there's at least power performance if not better. So the approach so far has largely been on balance, more sort of individual cluster based localized rather than across the board on a brownfield basis. But yeah, and that was first wave. Now we're getting through that and seeing the kind of commitments that the companies like TELUS are able to feel confident making. We're going to go to network wide with this and that's a strong sign. So yeah, that was always going to be the approach we'd have to take for any new network technology, make sure it doesn't affect the operation of a cell side in an adverse way and that's fully proven now. So now we're on to the next phase.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (09:44):
Okay, thanks Robert. Thanks everybody for those insights. It's going to be interesting to see how this develops in the next 12 months, whether that continues, but as we enter commercial deployment in Brownfield networks, can we look at the makeup of the relationships between vendors and operators here? Are we seeing the same set of disruptive companies that kickstarted open run or are we seeing the more traditional vendor incumbents gaining ground again and perhaps eventually coming? Good. Randy, you are our sole vendor representative on the panel today. You've been disrupting telecoms yourself. What's your view on this?

Randy Cox, Wind River (10:31):
Sure. Well we definitely see disruptors in the market in O ran and V ran and they're taking market share for sure. I would say though there's likely to be probably a limit to the number of them that will happen over time. I think they will evolve and there will be more that enter the market, but there's definitely disruptors and the number of disruptors I think will be dependent on how fast and how big the carriers make decisions in terms of deployment of role ran, which will create a competitive environment. I mean the faster the carriers adopt, the more competitive that market will become. I think over time the disruption will also occur in terms of innovation where new ideas and technologies will be adopted at the far edge capabilities like we're doing with Juniper where we're hosting a virtual CSR or cell site router. This is really bringing innovation that drives down TCO and so I think that's part of where you will see this kind of disruptive environment where these new innovations and ideas come from and that really will drive the industry.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (11:52):
Great. Thanks Randy. Robert, I'm going to come to you in a moment, but let me bring in Sushil first because I think you want to come in on this and pick up on some points.

Sushil Rawat, TELUS (12:00):
Sure. So while disruptive have been true to its name, they have been trying really, really hard to keep the envelope moving on the performance and features and whatnot. What we have seen as of today is disruptor have been really performing good in greenfield deployment. You can see that in Japan, also in Germany and also in the American market, the disruptor vendors have been really pushing the envelope and performing really well When it comes to Brownfield, traditional suppliers are putting their efforts in, I won't say all of them are where we want 'em to be. In all of this greenfield brownfield scenario, if you see where we stand today, Samsung, which is kind of sits somewhere in between disruptor as well as the traditional since they didn't have as big of a market share as a traditional supplier, not as little of a market share as disruptor. So Samsung has been winning quite a few project across the globe in Brownfield specifically and that has a lot to do with how complex and how demanding Brownfield operators are in terms of feature parity and performance and whatnot. So that's where disruptors are struggling a little bit to gain market momentum on the Brownfield side while they're doing really well on the greenfield side.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (13:32):
That's really interesting. These are absolutely fascinating insights here. Thanks very much both of you Robert. This is interesting, but is this just a natural way of evolving relationships and dynamics when we bring new technologies into play?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (13:49):
Yeah, it's interesting. In telecom, the value of incumbency is incredibly strong inside telcos and there's no doubt about it. We have seen incumbent and vendors really move quite a long way in the last couple of years to lean into the open ran agenda. They've had a lot of involvement in terms of developing the standards, contributing to things and trying to shape things and we've seen that play out when it comes to it Ran is a huge area of spend and size is going to have a factor in their incumbency and familiarity are always going to be very, very strong. That makes life more difficult for companies who have set out to only do open ran, but part of what we're seeing is the entry into the ran market of companies that are strong in other areas that now find a position, find a niche within what is open ran and particularly some of the fusion between open ran and cloud or desegregated RAN is offering opportunities for companies to come in and be disruptive but not necessarily be startups.

(14:52):
And that's kind of an interesting shift in the market landscape here. When you look at the stack of companies involved in putting together an open ran, some of 'em are companies, well some of them may be companies that are traditional providers and some of 'em are companies who come from a different context and that's quite interesting to see how the ran market as a whole is being disrupted. No doubt about it. The incumbency comes for a lot still. So I think referencing there you've got to have something really impactful to carry you through as a pure open ran vendor and there are some examples of that, but it's certainly a challenge for sure.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (15:31):
Oh yeah, this is very, very interesting. Thanks very much Robert and talking about the stack, let's move on because open ran also promised telcos, multi-vendor scenarios and a lot more, more choice, a lot more range of companies. What trends are we starting to see with regards to deployment partners? Are telcos happy with multi-vendor arrangements or are we starting to see a preference for single vendor led integrators and integrations? Sushil? Perhaps we could start with your thoughts on this one. Telcos happy with a multi-vendor approach. Do they want more like a one lead, one lead point of accountability or are there more factors involved here

Sushil Rawat, TELUS (16:24):
When it comes to stack or multi-vendor scenario? It's a very wide question. Multi-vendor is kind of inheritant as part of the technology itself is a nature of the stack. So when you do open ran, you are probably looking for a third party server supplier cas supplier application supplier and SMO supplier. So that's an inherent nature of the technology itself. So the data stack has to be a multi stack and that's probably what all the operators prefer. We have taken that path where we go and individually contract with all the suppliers and make sure that we get best of the technology, best of the price and get best of both world in terms of technology and commercials aspect. But when it comes to the network wide deployment or multi-vendor radio suppliers, that's where it becomes a little different question, right? Do you want to have that kind of probability where you have six different supplier, maybe not necessary because open ran as an architecture itself now allow you to disaggregate between the top end application software versus the infrastructure layer.

(17:42):
So on the infrastructure you already have a multi choice. However, on the top end application stack, now technology give you option to go single vendor, which gives you a scale and give you economy of scale, you probably have a better cost of ownership with a single supplier. So a lot of operators are going into single vendor direction when it comes to the application stack. However, it also gives you flexibility to pivot to a different supplier at any point in time. So since you have that flexibility now to quickly move from one supplier to other supplier in pretty much real time now, there is no need to have a multi-vendor network when it comes to application at least. So I personally see that as a stack having multi-vendor mix. However, on the application side, most of the operators going into the single vendor duration.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (18:39):
Great, that's really clear. Thanks for that definition, how you see the makeup there and what it actually means to telcos. Robert, what's your thoughts on this and are you starting to see trends emerging?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (18:55):
Yeah, it's interesting. I think there's a certain amount of refinement happening in Oprah ran over the past 18 months or so. I think we've gone slightly away from the dream of I can plug anything to anything and settled into a more pragmatic view which says well actually I want to plug some things into other things that work. I still get my choice of vendors, but I'm happy to narrow that down a little bit where the industry is meeting telcos halfway is really in establishing ecosystems and pre choosing partners that will independent companies that will work well together. So this is subject of a report we just put out on ecosystems in open ran because what's interesting about that is that the difference of lead if you like vendors in each case are not necessarily just alternatives of the same kind. So we're seeing different formulations around either hardware players or application software or radio providers and so on.

(19:55):
So it's interesting to see how that is meeting this need for the industry, which is always concerned about system integration. If we're going to disaggregate things and have open interfaces, who's going to put all that back together? Who's going to validate that again? And that's where we're seeing I think as a pragmatic response industry to say, look, we'll take on some of that burden for you and including groups like the Telecom Infra project, which again is an industry collaboration, they're trying to address that area. So I think what we are seeing is we're not done on the whole cycle yet, but we are seeing a consolidation into it being sure there's some individual choices, but operatives feel more comfortable when they can see an ecosystem in front of them and buy into that, even if there are choices within that. So it's an interesting development.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (20:42):
Absolutely. Thank you very much, Robert. And Randy, what are your thoughts here? What are you seeing?

Randy Cox, Wind River (20:50):
Well, I think there's obviously no doubt that the integration effort in deploying O Ran is a critical factor. I think carriers are, from our perspective, carriers are wanting and willing to be the integrator as they move forward so that they can drive this at the speed that they want. I don't see a trend where there's a third party integrator as of now. That doesn't mean it can't in the future at the moment I don't see that. Along with that, with the carriers taking more of a lead in that integration element, I would say that in terms of the ecosystem, we see vendors, we know that we must work together and so we're doing that in a very willing and transparent collaborative manner across the ecosystem. I see that and experience that regularly with all the multi-vendor partners that have to contribute in order to have the O ran market succeed. So I think that element of things helps in the effort required to do that integration and so I expect that to continue and only get better as we move forward.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (22:11):
Great. Good to hear Randy, thank you very much for that. It brings us to our final question. It's been really apparent during our conversation here, this market is evolving incredibly fast still, it's certainly not stagnant. It's a heck of a lot going on and a lot more still to do. However, it does appear that many operators are taking a cautious approach to deploying Open ran. We hear from research firms that are halving and reducing revenue forecasts of Open ran, especially in the short term. What do you think is the reason behind this caution and how can we accelerate Brownfield commercial deployments? Sushil, lemme come across to you first for your thoughts.

Sushil Rawat, TELUS (22:55):
Reducing market share for Open ran, as you mentioned Guy, I think it's not necessarily has anything to do with Open ran. What we are seeing is overall if you see globally the 5G deployment are reaching their completion and for operators to adopt a swap of their existing equipment or adding new equipment, that has to be a logical reasoning or a reason that justify the expense of adding or adding that cost of introducing a new technology or solution. So I don't think so operator globally are cautious or skeptical of Oran as a technology, but overall what I say is there is a trend of overall reduction in investment, especially when it comes to radio access technology with 5G deployment nearing its completion. So my comment would be that it's nothing to do with open ran as such. It is just that the deployment from here on will be much more pragmatic and much more business driven than the technology aspiration driven.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (24:16):
Yeah, absolutely. I get you. Thanks for those observations. So Randy, what are you seeing? Do you agree that this is part of a wider picture of toco spending and we shouldn't just take open ran in isolation here?

Randy Cox, Wind River (24:30):
Yeah, I would say I would agree with Hil on that. I do think that we probably all as an industry want to see open ran faster in that regard and I think there always has to be some kind of catalyst for a technology change as actually I think Sushi mentioned that earlier with respect to O ran. If carriers are looking at the detail of the progress within the industry, there's a number of different catalysts to encourage adoption here. And so if they really look at it closely, there's a TCO element in terms of improvement. That performance we've mentioned is as good or better than traditional. There's innovation and competition and of course the operational ease of cloud native technology. I think that alone is a reason to do this. Getting carriers really prepared for the evolution to six G when we get there. So there's a lot of work from that perspective and benefit of moving. Now an interesting report from Analyst Mason, I think it's an interesting selection of data there that the CSPs provided themselves. I think it was 41% said that they would speed up their deployment of RAN if they could. And so if we look at this, I think the industry wants this to happen and so we are ready to make that happen. I think the more carriers that deploy, the more confidence there'll be by the rest of the market and I think the ecosystem and market are ready and I say let's roll in the deployment.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (26:22):
Well we all support that advice. Randy, that's great. Thanks very much. Robert, do you want to come in with some final thoughts here as to is the time right and how we can accelerate Brownfield's commercial deployments?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (26:34):
Yeah, love to discuss this. It's a case of the 5G market sneezes and open RAN catches a cold. The difficulty is there is a near term slowdown as referenced in wireless network build out, but you can't hold that tied back eventually. Networks need upgraded routinely and so that cycle is part of how Open RAN is being normalized if you like. It's becoming part of that typical thing. The thing that most wants to break out of, in fact, it is still a gate that it's got to go through. I think there's a challenge with operators, even those who are the pioneers from a bra field point of view continue to, their strategy has always been to continue to do what they're doing as well as do open ran. So there's no barring perhaps TE us and their strategy. Recently all Broadfield operators are doing hybrid strategy on that and that begs the question, well what is it that Open Ran has to do?

(27:30):
I think Randy's touched on some really key points there. We've proven the parity thing. The next thing is what can an open ran do that a conventional RAN just can't do? So some of that is commercial access, access to innovation, easy to upgrade and so on. But I think when operators start seeing their results from Brownfield at a business level, they see that lower GCO showing up in annual reports. They see the effect on launching services to customers and bringing innovations to customers. That's when things will start to, I think really accelerate that momentum to address that question, what can we do to accelerate it? We've got to show results in ways that are meaningful at a business level and ideally meaningful at a customer level. Open around could certainly do that. You look at the amount of innovation going on experimentation and things like break and performance management and those are straight to the heart of all those top level concerns, costs, customer experience, all that good stuff that tugs like to talk about. When we see those kind of results bubbling up as a direct consequence of Open ran, that's when extra momentum will come into the market and we'll see more growth.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (28:38):
Great. Thanks Robert. Great insights from all of you, but we must leave it there for now. Although I'm absolutely convinced we will continue this debate during our live q and a show later today. For now though, thank you all for taking part in the discussion. If you are watching this on day one of our open Ran summit, then please send us your questions and we'll answer them in our live q and A show, which as I said is coming up later. The full schedule of programs and speakers can be found on the TelecomTV website. And don't forget to take part in our poll. Goodbye for now.