Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:11):
Hello, you are watching TelecomTV and our extended coverage of the DSP Leaders Report series. I'm Guy Daniels and today's discussion looks at some of the points raised in our current report. Open RAN advances in the RAN intelligent controller. Now before we get too deep into the development of the RAN, let's look at what it actually is. The RAN offers automated management capabilities for next generation mobile networks. It's a software stack that is rooted in the work of the open ran community and enables automated management and control of open ran networks. This stack can then host and run multiple applications, but to slightly complicate matters, the RIC comes in two formats. There's the non realtime RIC and the near realtime RIC. Now this diagram may make it a little easier to understand and we've added it to the report so you can download and study at your leisure, but basically the non-real time RIC shown at the top of this diagram is part of the service management and orchestration framework, which performs the broader data collection and network provisioning tasks.

(01:32):
And the near real-time RIC shown here in blue in the center takes this data and using xap performs automated network optimization tasks such as spectrum management or channel modeling. Now to try and understand why the industry is getting behind the RIC and to learn who are the early leaders here, we conducted vendor outreach to companies that were known to be developing a RIC platform. And now that we have published the results, it's the perfect time to discuss our findings with our special guests. So joining me on the program are David Allabaugh, who is Software solutions architect at Fujitsu and Robert Curran consulting analyst with Appledore Research. Hello, good to see you both. Thanks so much for joining us on the program and helping us better understand this. Now we can see from the report that the RIC is deemed to be important to network operators and the broader RAN community. That's really clear. But Dave, can I come to you first? Can you tell us what spurred Fujitsu to play a role in this part of the RAN sector and why you think RIC developments are important?

David Allabaugh, Fujitsu (02:57):
Thank you. Yes, so Fujitsu has been recognizing for quite some time the increasing complexity in wireless networks. So there's a variety of factors such as disaggregation, the trend towards multi-vendor, the increasing network densification. These things make the networks much, much more difficult to manage and there's an intense need for automation. Fujitsu's always been a strong advocate of open standard interfaces, so it was natural for us to participate in open, ran the O ran environment there and the RIC is a special part of that ecosystem that we see as enabling kind of the next generation of movement towards the software centric solutions and cloud native approaches to managing the network, enabling the automation, higher efficiency, better reliability in those networks overall. Fujitsu is a company that has a large swath of capabilities that we can bring to bear, so Fujitsu can bring in a lot of IT and software experience above and beyond the networking experience that we have and we felt that that was very valuable, especially when it comes to the RIC approaches. Now the RIC specifically we see as an approach that allows us to address closed loop problems and optimization problems maybe that we don't even know we have yet. It's a framework, not a fixed solution and that gives us the flexibility to move forward with these problems and come up with solutions that are above and beyond the capabilities that we might have today and might be specified within certain behavioral frameworks. So that's why Fujitsu came to the table to bring these new technologies in and leverage our skills in the networking marketplace.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (04:58):
Great, thanks so much Dave. It's interesting you say it really gives you a chance to address actual problems that we're facing in our networks and I'm sure we're going to pick up on this one during our conversation, but let me move across to Robert because you've been tracking this sector for a number of years now and you've got a lot of experience in the telecom software and automation sectors. Do you think that the RIC platforms will play an important role in mobile operator strategies in the future?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (05:27):
Yeah, absolutely. Guy, we've been talking about the RIC for at least three years in public forums such as this. It is certainly been attracting a lot of interest. As you said in the introduction, it's tied up with the open ran service management orchestration, SMO, but part of what we're seeing in the market is that that's being morphed a little bit more towards the next generation EMS for the network, not just open ran but even conventional ran and maybe even wider than that. So it's pretty interesting to see how operators and vendors are looking at the applicability of this to Dave's point about problems and solutions, absolutely the RICK is how we bring AI into the ran and that's really important because what we're seeing is we see a lot more data available in the ran, a lot more desire to do things on a more automated basis, so not just the 15 minute polling intervals. So anything you want to do that's more real time use, the term advisedly here and the more automated fashion the RIC and the XACT and art go with it are really integral to that whole mission. So yeah, it's certainly something that's going to be important going forward. May take a little time, we'll get to that, but yeah, it's how people see the future of networks working out.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (06:45):
Sure, thanks very much Robert. And it is early days as you say David. Our report also shows that operators, they're doing different things at different rates, not all working at the same pace at the same time. Is the risk sector progressing as you had expected and how do you see it developing moving forward?

David Allabaugh, Fujitsu (07:09):
Well, what I would say is the sector's perhaps not progressing as we might've hoped, but it's generally in line with what we had expected, right? So we've recognized at Fujitsu that the majority of the network deployments that we're going to be dealing with are have an aspect of Brownfield to them and that always brings some complication with it. We're involving the legacy technologies and incumbent vendors and that generally slows things down a little bit while we true up the bold new technologies that we're bringing to the table with the current technologies and the ways that those are handled today. So bringing those all together, we have seen a fair amount of progress recently Fujitsu, we ourselves are observing a lot of the demonstrations and the open projects that are coming up in the market. We are engaged in a number of different activities in terms of closed loop and optimization in labs, integrating RIC's with platforms. Both are bringing our RIC integrate with other platforms and other RICs integrating with our platform for a true multi-vendor approach for those. We're also seeing that there's a number of activities that we expect to come into play this upcoming year and those we believe to be both technology studies and demonstrations, but also we do believe that we're going to be seeing some of the evolution into deployment and actualization of those RIC technologies in the next year or so.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (09:00):
Great, thanks for that update Dave and Roberts. Even with innovation such as self-organizing networks, it's often the major round players that end up controlling the market evolution, but might it be different with the RIC and the associated R apps and X app sectors, is there now a real opportunity for the non-traditional, if you like, ran vendors to gain a real foothold with multiple mobile operators in multiple vendor environments?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (09:30):
In some ways that is the big question. Diane and Dave already referenced one point, very, very important point in incumbency. Incumbency is a massively strong factor and in this area and ran particularly more than other parts of the network, the players who are strong there are really don the top five players in RAN account for something like 95% of the total ran spend. So in terms of making entry into that market through and with those companies is going to be incredibly important. One thing I would say though is that that market itself maybe is starting to fragment a little bit because of the influence of open standards, open interfaces, disaggregation, even cloudification. So while that market exists among in the hands of essentially three or four or five vendors, pieces of that are starting to be broken out into other places and that's what gets interesting.

(10:19):
I think about the RIC and the involvement of third parties in here. I certainly think common vendors will have a part to play and again, part of what we're seeing in the market is those players themselves starting to establish a little more openness and ecosystems and partnerships and alliances around them in this area. So they're also looking to the future. If you are one of those other vendors, especially as vendors, you're not going to mind too much whether your revenue's coming directly from operators or whether it's coming via OEM type partner. So there certainly is opportunity there and again, the number of trials that are around Speak to that. One other point I'll mention about that is that the interest is widening in this area. So when you look at the influence of silicon vendors that IT infrastructure vendors, they've also got an interest in making this market grow. So instead of having grant funded startups, university Spinouts trying to battle through on their own, you're actually seeing a bit more of a constellation of powerful interests that really want this to be a success and want this to be something that's going to add value and maybe work in a different way. So I think again, not withstanding that it's early days, I think the opportunity, the possibility for new companies to come through and have a part of this market is pretty high

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (11:39):
And that's really encouraging. Robert, thanks very much for that. Dave, you've both spoken about the fact that there are entrenched players there, but there are opportunities as well. So from Fujitsu's perspective, how do you see all this playing out? What would you say needs to happen for this to be a truly competitive sector?

David Allabaugh, Fujitsu (11:59):
Well, so I'll say that new entrant to any market, it's an uphill battle for an entry into an established market. So it is a difficult aspect when we're dealing with new entries and coming up against Incumbencies. There's certainly a commercial factor to that, but we do need to recognize that there is a large amount of established expertise in those incumbents, the traditional network players. So that's not something that we're just going to get rid of. Truly speaking, to succeed in this market, you have to be better. And that's something that I think there is an opportunity to do. So as we come in, we see new players having some advantages. So they have an ability to come in with solutions that aren't encumbered by the long legacy of technology that they need to support. They don't have that brownfield technology that they have to haul along with them.

(13:01):
They have the ability to come in with the new ideas. Obviously the trend towards the open APIs and architecture is helping that. But above and beyond that, what we see is that the solutions themselves are moving beyond pure network solutions. So we've mentioned a couple times that these solutions are trending towards software and cloudification and that brings along with it a whole host of new challenges that will need to be addressed in terms of operations and optimization and control. Those are things where non-traditional players, new entrants to the market are going to be able to bring new expertise, new techniques, and really come in and have an ability to make their mark we believe. So Fujitsu's been working to enable this. We believe in strong partnerships and bring in non-traditional players. The support for open standards enables that. And having a multi-vendor environment with best of breed is something that we think is a goal. We're also encouraging operators to, I'll say hold fast to the desire that they have for that sort of an environment, right? It's often expedient and convenient to take a single vendor or close solutions when you have to do that, sometimes it's a choice you have to make, but we encourage the operators to continue to strive towards that open environment. We do think that in the end the ability to choose best in breed is worth the struggles that we're going through now.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (14:43):
Great. Thank you very much Dave. And some operators are doing that now. We've heard of some of them. Let me put a final question to the both of you because I'd like to ask what kind of impact will major open ran deployments such as the one we've been hearing about recently at and t, what impacts would these deployments have on the sector? And specifically in terms of the R, I'd like to ask each of you what you expect to see next year in 2025. Robert, let's come and hear from you first.

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (15:17):
Yeah, guy 2025 is going to be interesting. We are going to see the beginnings of the next phase of the market. I'm pretty sure that early in 2025 we're going to see some major commitments from significant operators, commercial commitments to implementing RIC solutions in their rollouts. The results that we've been hearing from trials and pilots are pretty interesting because they are absolutely hitting some hot buttons for telcos. Deutsche Telecom is reporting reduction in ran maintenance cost of 25% from its trials, 20% improvement in network performance at t is already quoting 15% improvement in spectral efficiency. These are hot buttons for telcos. And so I think there's a willingness to desire to see those things get rolled out at scale. And I think that's largely what we're going to see through 2025 is those results starting to come out. People starting to realize, yeah, this is possible and we can do this and we can do this at scale. It will be just the start of that process though. But I think we'll see much more evidence and we'll see all of the piece parts coming together, not just peer to peer vendors, but some of the things that Dave's talking about, some multi-vendor examples, some wider solutions, some combinations of xap and R apps together. We might see that towards the end of the year, but I think that's it's going to be a year of progress. So that would be my prediction for next year.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (16:43):
And Robert is a lot of this coming from the fact that it's actual tangible improvements to the balance sheet that's persuading a lot of operators to go the open ran and RIC route.

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (16:54):
I think the RAN and RIC represents such an obvious target. It's a data rich environment. It consumes the most energy as a single entity part of the network. It consumes a great deal of the maintenance and the people costs. So it's an obvious target to go looking for improvements. It also taps into a thirst and an interest in machine learning and wider ai. So I think the fact that it's touching those agenda items and it's becoming more feasible and when telcos see other telcos doing it, then they start to ask the question, well can we do that? And if not, why not? And let's make it so that we can. I think one last thing that I would mention on this is through 2025, it's going to be interesting to see to what extent the RIC continues to be associated with open ran or to what extent it begins to be associated more with other forms of ran either traditional RAN or cloud ran.

(17:55):
That will be interesting to see whether this becomes seen as something that's future looking or something almost as a retrofit on top of today's networks. Particularly when you get into areas like spectral efficiency. The idea that I could squeeze more capacity or what I already have is an interesting possibility. One vendor we were talking to recently made an interesting observation, which was the idea that our applications are more to do with operational expense and xapp already to do with capital expense, which is an interest, an interesting way of looking at the different opportunities in this market and the different kind of problems that are being solved. So again, I think through 2025 we're going to see some variety and some clarity really on high telcos are prioritizing what they want to send the RIC into battle against basically.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (18:41):
Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see how it all pans out next year. Thank you so much Robert and David, what about you? What do you expect to see, what developments do you expect to see in the RIC market in particular next year?

David Allabaugh, Fujitsu (18:54):
Well, I think Robert just made a great point there. So some of the impacts that we expect to see in the upcoming year are the shift from a pure O ran RIC approach into more of a CSUN D SSON type approach. Something that Brownfield embedded network issue that I referred to earlier. So we think that we've as an industry gotten to the point where we're able to grapple with that a little more and we expect that to be something that's coming into focus during this upcoming year. We expect to see continued influence from outside of just the operators government programs that continue to foster this. The openness and the advancement of these technologies is something that we expect to see through the next year. So in particular, we do expect to see some major impactful operator trials and initial deployments late in 2025 to manage those SAN and RIC type cases to start to actually roll that out.

(20:00):
We expect to see continued the programs to foster the open innovation activities with a focus on RIC and the apps that will be deployed on them. And we expect to see a lot of activity continuing within the O Ran community to solidify those interfaces and the models that support them along with the overall architecture to streamline that environment and even start to bring in new technologies. Things like working intent-based networking into the flow of RIC and apps, things like that will continue to advance the technology. So it's not that things are stagnant, we continue to move, maturing what we have and bring new innovations the table.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (20:48):
Great. Thanks very much Dave. There's huge potential here. It's going to be a really interesting 2025. Well, we must leave our discussion there for now. Thank you both for taking part in sharing your views with us today. Now, if you haven't already done so, please do download the DSP Leaders report. It's available to all registered viewers of telecom tv, and registration is free. So just sign up now and you can not only get our RIC report, but you'll have access to all of our DSP leaders content. And if you are new to telecom tv, please do take a look at our dedicated open RAN channel where you'll find the latest news analysis and videos including all of the discussions from our Open Ran summit series. For now though, thank you so much for watching and goodbye.