Sean McManus, TelecomTV (00:07):
Hi, I am Sean McManus from Telecom TV and I'm here at MWC. I'm talking today to Paco Martin Pignatelli, who is head of Open, RAN at Vodafone and Paul Miller, CTO at Wind River. Tell me, how do you feel about the industry adoption of Open RAN so far, Paul?

Paul Miller, Wind River (00:26):
Well, we're coming through a few years of really early work in Open RAN and coming out of the exit of Virtual RAN and at least our industry has seen slower than expected adoption. We've seen though in 2024 heading into 2025 that that's really taken an uptick and we think that's a result of now having the technology proven at scale with deployments such as the ones we have at Vodafone that really show that the TCO can achieve or be superior than traditional RAN as well as have some additional benefits. And now that that's proven out, we're seeing greater adoption of the technology.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (00:57):
Thank you, Paco.

Paco Pignatelli, Vodafone (00:59):
Oh, I fully agree with that. We are seeing the technology works. We are also proving that the TCO can be better than ever, better than traditional radio. And it is happening and we are very happy after a few years to see this and I think now is the time for everybody to start looking at this, not just the big players. So I would like to call tier two, tier three operators to start looking into Open Run and actually reach out to us in Vodafone. We are happy to collaborate. Open Run is about collaboration. So I am sure next 12 months will be about massive scale adoption.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (01:40):
Tell me what the partnership between your company's involves and how it's going, Paul.

Paul Miller, Wind River (01:45):
Yeah, thanks. So we've obviously spent many years deeply invested in virtual RAN and now Open RAN with the O-RAN alliance and software community providing an O Cloud solution for Open RAN and proving that solution through massive deployments globally with multiple tier one service providers, including Vodafone. That's really brought us to the point where we have an offering now that is really the underpinning of many production deployments globally and operators such as Vodafone are benefiting from the hardening and feature rich capabilities as a result of multiple service providers using the technology.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (02:16):
And Paco, how do you see the partnership from Vodafone's perspective,

Paco Pignatelli, Vodafone (02:21):
Understanding and appreciating their previous results with other players in the industry. But I have to say that's been a perfect partnership working all the way from r and d collaboration. We are very heavy on r and d planning and adding r and d work and it's great to work with the Wind River on that. But then it's also about the liberty and then about the operation so that we have all the experience and we are confirming our support and the willingness to continue working with Air Wind River in the future.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (02:51):
Regarding the validation of the stacks for O Ran and benchmarking the solution, tell me what the learnings are so far, Paul.

Paul Miller, Wind River (02:59):
Well it's been really interesting looking from our perspective in the overall solution stack. Some of the capabilities that we've implemented like low core count overhead, high performance, Linux kernels, advanced networking, these have resulted for us in the component of the CAS layer that's provided in the open RAN stack in a very highly performance solution. And that has a material impact on TCO for the service provider because of the amount of sectors and RF information they can pull through that node as well as the number of nodes and the cost to deploy and operate those nodes. So it's interesting that we've seen in the performance and benchmarking aspect, the superiority of a high performance solution actually having positive impacts on TCO.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (03:37):
And then from your side Paco, what's the learnings for you?

Paco Pignatelli, Vodafone (03:40):
For us benchmarking is the way we deal with the technology introduction. We do very heavy benchmark from the technical perspective at the roadmap level, but then we also go into the lab of the field this year is new, our benchmark in the CASA area, we've been testing extensively high number of vendors, over 500 different test cases, working closely with a company called VO A R that's helping us on developing this methodology. And we got the first results and it is great news that we are confirming how good the technology is from Wind River and we are very happy to see it actually with the results right

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (04:25):
Now that the performance and the KPIs are proven. Tell us about the role that automation will play in operations, Paul.

Paul Miller, Wind River (04:32):
Well that's actually a really interesting story. Initially we started about six years ago with the deployment of virtual RAN that evolved into open RAN, and much of that time was spent hardening the castle layer so that you had really a bulletproof platform, cost efficient, high performant to run this type of technology. However, as we started deploying at high scale, we found that having a single pane of glass where you could see what's happening in that work through advanced analytics capabilities as well as orchestration and automation, not only for deploying the applications like we typically do in cloud technology, but actually managing the infrastructure and the upgraded lifecycle of that technology and performing operations tasks that the service provider often has to do in order to maintain their network. What we often call in the industry day two operations. So in the past few years we've made heavy investments in automation. What we've found from working with service providers is over ran is only truly realizable. The only way you can get to optimal TCO and superiority to traditional RAN is by heavily embracing automation to ensure that your ongoing day-to-day operations is low cost.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (05:36):
Paco?

Paco Pignatelli, Vodafone (05:37):
In the last few years we have proven that the radio technology in open round works. I think now it's very important that we fulfill the promise of lower TCO and automation is essential for this. We need to see in the next few months that all the technology around this area matures. We need to take into account that we are moving into a pure software based type of solution and then automation will be key in order to handle the more complex multi-vendor integrations and to deliver on TCO. So we are carefully watching this space.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (06:15):
Tell us how are carriers looking at new tech such as Intel Zion six, Paul?

Paul Miller, Wind River (06:20):
Well certainly we've seen some interesting things, right with the evolution of the processor technology that's used in the cloud infrastructure. These are actually incredibly important for tcio. Zon six is having an impact of reducing the edge note count by half, right? The ability to integrate multiple 5G Spectrum onto the same server platform gives us the ability to have dramatically lower server component costs out at the edge of the network and obviously at the edge of the network, that's where your highest volume of components are. So it has a massive impact on TCO. So as we move from the last generation to Zion six, we expect that has a really positive impact on TCO for the industry. The other area that we're seeing an impact is in the great adoption of artificial intelligence. Obviously AI is all the rage nowadays. It's being used for radio intelligent controller and dynamic beam forming on the RF interface, but also in operations and automation of these systems. And so these higher performance processors enable us to implement AI throughout the network.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (07:18):
And Paco, how is Vodafone looking at technologies such as Intel Zion Six?

Paco Pignatelli, Vodafone (07:22):
Yeah, CHIPS are very important in radio. They drive good part of the cost of it and also they are very essential when it comes to performance. So for the much more complex scenarios, performance make a difference. So having this platform C six is coming at the right time. We as an operator, we want to deploy only one server in the site. We don't want to have more and chips up making an impact on our plan and making it possible to deploy, which is great. Ultimately Open Run is about partners and everybody has to get the latest technology one the extra mile and we are very happy to count on CX six.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (08:07):
Paul, finally, what would be your advice to other carriers who are looking at deploying Open RAN?

Paul Miller, Wind River (08:13):
So we've seen some incredible power in the movement to Open RAN the ability to vertically disaggregate the solution with off-the-shelf hardware, virtualization technology and applications. That's driven an incredible competitive landscape. This benefits the service provider tremendously in that we always, throughout the entire life of the network need to remain competitive in pricing and capabilities or we run the risk in an open environment of being swapped out. So commercially this puts a tremendous amount of power in the customer, in the service provider's hands. The downside to that though is there's a complexity that gets introduced. You've got multiple vendors here today coming together with a complex solution and some of that integration that falls on the service providers in order to absorb and deal with that, that complexity has cost and pain associated with it. So I think one of the things you'd look for in adopting this technology has the vendor community outside of the service provider fully integrated their solution at the hardware and accelerator layer at the application layer. Solving some of these problems as you bring the solution to a service provider enables them to have a lower pain in the experience of adopting Open RAN. So we believe firmly in that and I'd certainly encourage any service provider looking at adopting Open RAN to choose partners that have really great ecosystem and well integrated solutions.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (09:29):
And Paco, Vodafone obviously has a lot of experience here. Tell us what would be your advice to other operators that are looking to deploy Open, RAN

Paco Pignatelli, Vodafone (09:37):
Well, I think right now we know that the performance works. It does it for any scenario and we also more certain than ever, than the price can be the right one. The TCO can be the right one. So my advice would be don't delay it. Start working in open run. Now it takes some time for any organization to change. This is a different way of doing radio, so you need to get into it. And we offered Vodafone the possibility to come to us. To us and we will be support then.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (10:09):
Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure to talk to you today. Thank you very much.