Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (00:06):
What is the current state of O RAN and sustainability in the ran? Well, to discuss this topic, let's engage Christina Rodriguez, VP in the Network and Edge Group and GM of the Wireless Access Network Division at Intel and Geetha Ram, global head of Telco Infrastructure Solutions at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. And Matteo Fiorani, head of distributed Unit infrastructure and security at Ericsson. Welcome to all of you today. Thank you. So Christina, just to start with, where are we today with RAN and what progress has been made so far?

Cristina Rodriguez, Intel Corporation (00:43):
We are in the middle of a massive transformation. There's been a tremendous progress. We have today major operators deploying commercially at a scale. We have operators starting to deploy and we have pretty much everybody saying that they are going to take this journey one way or another. So really tremendous progress, tremendous momentum. You see, for example, just to be more specific and just throw some examples, we see Verizon that have already deployed more than 15,000 virtual cell sites and they have said, we wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't equal or better than the way they had before. You have Vodafone, for example, also deploying commercially after finishing a trial where they resulted the results show again that the majority of the measurements were better equal or better that the legacy that they were replacing. You have, for example, an at and t made an announcement that we all got our attention.

(01:50):
Of course we have Telefonica, Deutsche Telecom, Rakuten and Dish of course, and Telus recently announcing to. So really tremendous progress. And what we have seen is that the industries embracing, again, is embracing these software defined network architecture based on server architecture with CPUs underneath that architecture that can give them all the capabilities without compromising the KPI. And then back to the sustainability point, again, a lot of these type of architecture benefits, their sustainability goals that we're trying to reach. We have with HPE, they Gen 11 using the device at which the SOC that we launched last MWCA year ago is our fourth generation of Intel C on a scalable processor with V ran boost and fantastic because with that you have everything that you need to run the entire workload, run workload. So you don't need any external component, any additional component. And by that you get double the capacity, but you also get an additional 20% of energy consumption and they have a, HP has their Gen 11 featuring this CPU and giving that to the operators and then we stop there.

(03:22):
So I would say one more thing. This year at MWC 24, we are announcing the Future Gen for also the brand workload is named Gran Rapid D. And again, it will bring significant performance, boost energy efficiency, new features and new enhancements and including AI built in additional AI built in acceleration. So you can have everything, you can run the entire workload, the run, and the AI without having any external component consuming power. And then finally, I would say that Ericson has already done a call, a first call in the Gran Rapid deep platform. So fantastic just getting better and better.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (04:17):
So there's a lot going on. And Geetha , how does RAN help operators meet their sustainability targets?

Geetha Ram, HPE (04:25):
Well, the sustainability parents is a team effort. It's an ecosystem effort, right? So you start off with the silicon itself, and Christina spoke a lot about the Intel's participation in this and the CPUs and all of the things that Intel is doing. So we start by taking the best silicon and she spoke about everything from the current generation. We've been doing this with Intel for several generations and you spoke Christina about Verizon and we've been doing it for generations from Cascade Lake, right, improving from Cascade Lake, ice Lake Sapphire Rapids, to now Granite Rapids D. And so you pick the right silicon and then from there, along with that partnership, we build a very nice workload optimized server that basically caters to the RAN workload and addresses the sustainability issues. And how we do it is along with our ecosystem partners, including Ericsson and the OS CAS vendors, whether it's any one of the OS CAS vendors, red Hat, wind River, et cetera. And we build what we call the vRAN reference configurations. This is where we optimize not just the hardware but all the way up through the stack. We make sure that everything is optimized for the bios, the firmware, and all the way up to the workload. And when you optimize everything for performance, for power, et cetera, that's how you address the sustainability. Once again, it is an ecosystem challenge that we all have to work together and we are working together to address it.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (06:13):
And speaking of working together, what Mateo is the future of these companies working together and what's in the plans to make this grow even more?

Matteo Fiorani, Ericsson (06:26):
I think that there is a bright future for this company to work together. The collaboration so far has been outstanding as Christina and Gita also mentioned cloud and is an ecosystem. So we need to bring it together. It's not just one company. It's many company that need to collaborate, work very tightly together to bring competitive solutions to the market. We actually at Ericsson have a name for this type of collaborations. We call them pre-integrated solutions. One of the challenges that comes with cloud and an open brand is actually that it disaggregates the different layers, the heart, the cloud infrastructure and the software. And we together are bringing them back in a single system. So this is where our collaboration, it's fundamental that collaboration with company like HPE and Intel is totally fundamental to bring solutions that are easy to integrate, easy to deploy, efficient, and can always deliver to the maximum performance.

(07:19):
So this is the great advantage of having this collaboration that we can build together pre-integrated solution that are ready for the customer and always deliver on the best performance. We also think that another important aspect is of course standardization. Because with standardization we can have a base reference with all the companies developing against that base reference so that it can help to smooth out and easy, the pre-integration work, leaving the opportunity for the operator to also select different options and give flexibility, which is one of the idea behind Open Run. So I think that the collaboration is great. There is a bright future ahead for the three companies to work together. As Christina mentioned, we have just now achieved the first call on Integra Rapids and soon we'll start into integration also working with HP on it. So to make sure that we have a full end-to-end solution. So I see a lot of opportunities in the future.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (08:13):
It is one of the most exciting partnerships in our industry today. So thank you all for your insights. Thank

Geetha Ram, HPE (08:18):
You. Thank you.

Matteo Fiorani, Ericsson (08:20):
Thank you very much.