Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:05):
We are on the show floor here at Fyuz 24 in Dublin. I'm here with Richard MacKenzie. He is distinguished engineer for wireless networks at BT. Richard, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Good to see you. So what brings you to Fyuz event this year?

Richard MacKenzie, BT (00:20):
Well, there's probably two areas for fyuz. I mean in general. And what's really exciting is to just get an idea of just how Open Ran is doing. So the amount of people attending the updates they've got. I think fyuz is probably the best event to get those updates on the ecosystem as a whole. And then more specifically around the RIC, that's one of the areas I'm focusing my work on at the moment. It's about basically presenting the results. So we've got lots of participants from some of our collaborative projects at the event, so we're sort of showcasing what we've done so far in those projects, but we're also trying to make sure that people are aware of what we're planning in the future so they can get involved because a very exciting time for the RIC.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (01:04):
Okay. So can you just tell, because this collaborative work I think is part of some of the working groups organized by tip, which organizes this event as well. So can you just tell us about BT's role within tip?

Richard MacKenzie, BT (01:19):
Okay. So BTS involved in several projects within tip. One of them is the TIP RIA group, which is run intelligence and automation. And it's essentially looking to develop and commercialize the RIC platforms

(01:35):
And I'm one of the TIP RIA group. So in terms of our involvement, we work on, we've done a number of projects, but at the moment we've got one active project that's done through tip. So TIP are actually the project leads and then we've got some UK government funding and BT we play one of the roles in that consortium. We are the operator participant. We've also got a number of vendors that create the RIC platforms and the apps that go on the RIC and the other parts of the network, the core network and the test environments. So altogether we come together and we do this testing, which is focused on use cases which have been developed within the tip RIA group. And then we're feeding the results from that project back into TIP RIA so that not just the participants of the project but the tip RIA group as a whole get to understand and learn benefit from those activities.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:33):
So just to swing back for a second to the RIC, so this is the RAN intelligent controller. It's not new but it's, this is a technology that seems to be gaining momentum now seems to be more interest, more engagement with it. How would you describe the RIC and the role it might play in networks?

Richard MacKenzie, BT (02:56):
Well, it is certainly the most exciting component in the network. I think partly because it's new, but it's the brain of the network. So what we really want as an operator is a dynamic reconfigurable network. So when we want to provide a range of different services, we can quickly reconfigure the network and do things and launch service efficiently and easily. And the RIC seems to be the way to do that. And so that's what we're trying to achieve and I think that's what the key driver of the RIC is. So in those senses, that's what the RIC can become in the early days. It's doing some of the more basic things. It's doing the automation features. We're starting to look at how we can do optimization. We're taking one use case at a time and what we're doing within the Tipia group now and within the Anne project, we're also looking at what I'd say is the last big challenge for the RIC before we can see true commercial deployments. And that is conflict mitigation.

(03:55):
So if we think of use cases like energy saving, that's got a lot of attention at this event. It is very important. And the main objective is turn things off when they're not needed, save energy. Whereas a lot of the other use cases are about performance optimization. So when you want extra resources just to make those minor improvements here and there, there's a conflict immediately observable that when you're trying to turn things off and you want to turn things on at the same time, there's going to be a conflict. But some of the other conflicts are not so obvious and that's the area that we're trying to explore now. And as an industry, we need to make sure that we're aware of what those conflicts can be, but also how to resolve them. And once we're in a position that is stable, then we can actually deploy the RIC and we will be able to select applications from multiple vendors, piece them together as we need, and the conflict will be well managed and the overall service will be the range of services that the operator wants.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (04:52):
Okay. And you mentioned the ARIAN project, I think that stands for accelerating ran intelligence across network ecosystems.

Richard MacKenzie, BT (05:02):
That sounds right.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:04):
Is that still an ongoing project as well? Yes.

Richard MacKenzie, BT (05:07):
Yeah. So that started last year. It'll be wrapping up in March next year. We've gone through several stages in that project so far. We've got two different RIC platforms and we've got three different RIC application vendors. What we've done up to now is we've developed those different applications, tested them individually on the different RIC platforms, and now we're getting onto the, what I think is the most interesting part is the conflict mitigation aspect. So I think what we've done so far, we've done the easiest type of conflict mitigation where all of the apps come from a single vendor. So reasonably straightforward and you'd be surprised if there were any big problems. And what we're coming onto, I think we're starting this month is the real conflicts where we've got multi-vendor and we're mixing up applications including energy saving, cause enhancement, traffic steering. We're going to be mixing those different applications together and those applications come from different vendors and we're going to see how they react.

(06:10):
Does one application win over the other? Do they both make each other fail? We're not sure what to expect. And basically whatever we find we're going to be feeding that back into the RIA subgroup. And so we can make decisions. What do we need to do? Do we need to influence standards within orran Alliance for the near real time RIC and the non-real time RIC, they're now looking at conflict mitigation and making sure that the right message is in place to detect and resolve conflicts. And what we can do with our project is we can actually feed firsthand knowledge of conflicts that we've experienced and how we could resolve them into those industry groups.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:49):
Okay. And are you getting the sense that there are more companies now starting to develop the R apps and the X apps that will run on the RIC platforms? Is there momentum there?

Richard MacKenzie, BT (07:03):
Absolutely. I think in terms of multi-vendor, that's probably the most successful part of Open Ran. The really is a big opportunity there and a big opportunity for genuine new entrants. So if you're a small company and you're only providing one specific thing, creating an xapp or an R app is something that really is achievable and we've seen support from the RIC platforms or the RIC vendors to help those app developers port their apps onto those various RICs. So it is something that we've seen with a past project ARI 5G, the main thing that we demonstrated was third party applications can be brought onto someone else's RIC. Now what we're looking at is can we actually do that where a third party application not just goes onto one RIC but can actually be moved onto multiple RICs and that seems to be achievable. And there was a RIC forum earlier in the year, we saw there were applications operators are doing them. We've done one or two ourselves in the past. There are universities creating applications, there are the, what you'd call it, the big RAN vendors. They're doing the applications, we've got the disruptor ran vendors. You can get applications from any of these experts and you can actually piece together so you can get the expertise from one area and expertise from another area and bring them together to create your unique service combination.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:33):
Yeah, this seems to be in open ran conversations over the years. There's been a lot of talk about multi-vendor and innovation and this does seem to be where that is going to happen rather than in the broader RAN software space. So for bt, how could this work eventually play out in terms of what BT does? Is there a vision that at some point that these kind of controllers will be able to manage any kind of a RAN environment?

Richard MacKenzie, BT (09:14):
Well, yeah. So as I say, the big prize is if we can demonstrate this is the way to achieve a reconfigurable network

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (09:23):
And not just open ran. Cause I think a lot of people go, oh RIC, that's just for open ran. But increasingly that's not the case, is it?

Richard MacKenzie, BT (09:30):
Well, I guess people have different definitions of what open run is, but if you say what's the alternative to open run? I'm not sure which vendors we have available that don't claim to have an open run solution. I think the features that are embedded in the R or whether you want to call it a R, those are what we need to get the reconfigurable network. And I think in terms of what BT want to do with it, so in the short term, our use cases have always been around the small cell opportunities, the private networks and neutral host deployments. And there's a lot of value there for showing just how powerful the writ can be because especially with private networks, it's all about creating a unique service with existing components. And so if you can piece them together and create unique services that are maybe unique just to that one private network, then that's really going to show the value of the RIC in the longer term.

(10:25):
People are always asking about the big prize, the macro networks. That's something that we want to achieve. And at the moment we see the macro network is fundamentally for enhanced mobile broadband, but now the industry and certainly in the uk, we're seeing that we're migrating to standalone 5G, and that's where it becomes much more exciting. We're then talking about different slices, different types of services, and as we start to see customers that want different slices and we want to be able to create that on our network, that's where the real value comes from the RIC, where we can actually reconfigure the network to get those services or slices that the end customer will want.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (11:06):
Okay. So I mean some really interesting areas of development there, Richard. And this is something that we're very interested at, telecom tv, the development of the RIC, and it's good to see that it's kind of getting more airtime now than it may be was in the past couple of years. So thanks for bringing us up to speed with what BT is doing for itself, but also in collaboration at tip. And look forward to chatting with you again in the future. Thank you.