Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:05):
So we're in London at Future net World 2024. I'm here with Nazim, Benhadid. He's the CTO at Telus, the Canadian operator. Nazim, thanks so much for joining us today.

Nazim Benhadid, TELUS (00:14):
Thanks for having me.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:16):
The big news for many this year from TELUS is that we've committed to an open ran deployment. Can you just give us the overview of exactly what TELUS is doing here?

Nazim Benhadid, TELUS (00:29):
So we've announced that in the next couple of years we're going to swap 50% of our 4G 5G network with an open R ran construct. What's particular about what we've announced is that it's truly open in a sense that if you look at the four layers of the network, the compute is provided by a company by HPE, the os, the operating system, and the Kubernetes platform is provided by Wind River. The network function is provided by Samsung and then the radio interface is open and which allows us to use radios from third party or from anybody we want. And we've had this as a strategy for a couple of years. We have a compelling event. We have to swap our network being from a vendor that's not supported anymore in North America. And we thought about the best strategic way to do it. So as we do that, not swap like like but swap for future technology and O RAN was that for us and we didn't want to go into your traditional vRAN that's half closed, half open. We truly wanted to go all in with the most open version of it.

(01:45)
We've conducted field trials in Canadian City, we've had that for a while. And our observation is that it is as good in terms of performance or better than traditional ran. Interesting. And then it has all the other benefits. So first one is performance pass with a plus total cost of ownership. It's already better than traditional ran and it's at the beginning of the journey. So we expect that over time it's going to get better and better. We went for the disaggregated model. It gives us flexibility in a world where we were completely locked in with the vendors we selected. Now we can play the market forces to get the best out of each one of the components. It's programmable, it's software defined. So from our perspective it has a lot of benefits for sure. We had to go through integration learnings, but we decided early on that we were going to be the masters of our destiny. That we would control as many of the integration points as we could and that we would work with our partners or we would select as partners, companies who are willing to be open and play with that. And so far extremely pleased with the results and with the partners that we selected. And as I said, in the next two years, 50% of our network will be completely or

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:09):
So. It's interesting that you mentioned the performance aspect because there's been a session here at this event on open ran where there were speakers from the operator community and they were like, it would be nice to have exact performance parity, but we don't think we're quite yet there yet. But the partners you have, do you think that because they've all been doing this for a few years already, they have experienced at some of the other operators that they're a little bit ahead of the game in terms of how they're working together?

Nazim Benhadid, TELUS (03:42):
So I think there's a bit of that. There's an ecosystem view, there's a compatibility, an affinity view that is important. But I think the most important part is the partners have to be committed. It has to be in their vision that the most open, the better it is because if it's open and they transparently share internal performance details and fine tune each other's performance through constant feedback loop, it's going to get better. But if the provider is actually trying to keep a portion of the ecosystem that they're closed that they don't want to share what's happening inside their systems, then it's going to be very, very hard because they don't have end-to-end control. So in order to be performed in an end-to-end non homogenous system, every one of the components, each one of the components has to be very, very transparent. And that's what we have. So for example, HPE and Wind River and Samsung work very closely together. They send their own engineering team into each other's location to work on this. And there's other carriers who follow this exact ecosystem that we're in. And of course with scale it allows you to fine tune, but as I said, it starts with the desire to be both open and have exceptional performance.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:02):
Okay. Now you mentioned earlier that you wanted to go fully open, not go halfway, because you are thinking of the future of the bigger picture. What is that bigger picture? What is this going to mean further down the line for telus?

Nazim Benhadid, TELUS (05:18):
So programmability, so fully automated network openness gives you that innovation. Now that it's open, more players can get into the ecosystem, the barriers to entry go away. We see very small companies innovate in this world, especially if you look at SMO and non realtime Rick and all the athletes that can go and attach to the ecosystem. Huge opportunity there. And for too long you had three, four choices for an OEM and once you made that choice, swapping or substitution was very, very high. Now we can swap any of these components very, very quickly. The software components by clicking a button and the hardware components. Since hardware gets obsolete since into three to four years, the opportunity for swap becomes more frequent. And that brings innovation, openness, and competition brings innovation. We're convinced of that.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:27):
So at what stage, you mentioned the management layer there and the round intelligent controllers and there's quite a few companies developing the R apps and the X apps that can run on those Rick platforms, but that seems to have got stalled a little bit. We don't seem to be, or the industry doesn't seem to be too much further than it was maybe two years ago. Where are you at the stage of testing or trialing or finding capabil?

Nazim Benhadid, TELUS (06:56):
We have a number of players currently in the lab for the non-real time rec. On the real time wreck we've made our choice. Okay. The way we look at SMO is it's a framework in which each one of the components can be sourced from a different player depending on their strength. And again, the affinity, right? So we want to do the same thing on the SMO that we're doing on the actual RAN components, which has to be modular, it has to be interoperable, it has to be open and it has to bring the most value as possible. I think

(07:35)
Non-real time Rick was stalled because the market wasn't there in a sense that truly open networks being deployed in production and buying these X apps or air ops. If you look at the last six months, lots of announcements of carrier deploying some version of OAN or vRAN. And then if you project in the next two years, it's going to be non-trivial, part of the overall deployment in the world of the networks in production. And I think that's going to drive that innovation and then everybody who's not Oran is going to see the benefits that come out of that and that's going to increase the adoption.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:14):
Okay. Well it's going to be interesting to track the TELUS journey. I know I've been hearing about Canada's going to be the next market where there's going to be a big push and 50% of the network. That's quite a commitment. You're not going tiny, you are going pretty big.

Nazim Benhadid, TELUS (08:33):
Yes, we're confident. I mean you need scale to have an impact and that's what we're looking for. So.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:38):
Yes. Okay. Excellent. Nazim, great. Thanks for joining us today. Great to talk to you.

Nazim Benhadid, TELUS (08:42):
Thank you. Thank you for your time.