Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:24):
Hello, you are watching the Future of RAN Summit, part of our year-round DSP Leaders coverage and it's time now for our live Q and A show. I'm Guy Daniels and this is your one and only chance during this year's summit to ask questions about the future of ran. There is no day two, so if you have a question then please send it to us now as fast as you can. Well, as part of today's summit, we featured a panel discussion that looked at the open ran reality in 2025. And if you missed the panel, don't worry because we're going to be rebroadcasting it straight after this live q and A program. And remember, we are not just covering open ran, but also V ran cloud ran ai, ran all the colors, all of the sizes. We have already received a number of questions, but we do have time for more.

(01:24):
Use the q and a form on the website to send your questions to the team. Well, I'm pleased to say that joining me live on the program today are Sarat Puthenpura, who is Chief Architect Open Radio Access Network for the Open Networking Foundation. Prakash Desai who is Senior Director of Product Management at Wind River, and Robert Curran, consulting Analyst for Appledore Research. Hello everyone. It's good to see you all. Thanks so much for taking part in our q and a today. Let's get straight to our first audience question and I'll read it out to you. The question asks is the future of ran more likely to be the future of Rans and what will be the implications of a multi ran telecoms architecture? So are we in a plurality of rans Prakash, let's start with your come to you first. What are your thoughts on this multi run architecture?

Prakash Desai, Wind River (02:31):
Thank you guy and thank you audience for taking the time this morning to spend with us. I believe it is not intentional that the operators deploy rans, different types of rans. It's happening by the evolution of the technology itself. It started as two G and then 3G, 4G. With every new G that is introduced, the architecture changes, it's basically a rip and replace kind of a hardware architecture. So today we have, I mean in Europe there is still two G, we have two G, we have 4G, we have 5G. There is a mix of traditional ran. Now we are talking about virtualization, we are talking about containerization. Open ran is bringing its own flavor, so we are already there where we have these different types of RAN being deployed today. Okay, from the operator perspective, their biggest asset is that spectrum. And depending on the spectrum they hold, they will deploy either millimeter wave or mid band or low band.

(03:38):
And for each of these different spectrums, the hardware architecture stack is different. The deployment topology is different. So I believe it's just by the nature of technology, by the nature of the assets that the CSPs have that we will be evolving into these so-called multi ran kind of a deployment. But I believe what the future holds is convergence in the form of cloud native as we go from 5G towards six G. It's definitely going to be disaggregated architecture. It's all going to be open, ran kind of a deployment going forward. The second thing that I see happening is definitely deployment at scale with automation and AI playing a big role. The third thing that I see happening is ecosystem collaboration, which will be much more prevalent with all the different players in the ecosystem today. Okay. Whether it's hardware vendors, whether it's telco OEMs, whether it is application development developers, they all came together and developing this multi ran kind of an architecture. So I think to summarize, yes, multi ran is going to be the defacto standard as we move forward. And I believe the operators are going to offer network as a service leveraging the different complex networks they already have in this new multi ran future.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:14):
Great. Thanks for those comments Prakash. That frames it very clearly there. Thank you. And Sarat, let's come across to you. What are your thoughts about this question about operating in a multi ran architecture?

Sarat Puthenpura, ONF (05:27):
So this question interestingly reminds me a conversation I had about a decade ago with a thought leader in the laboratories in memorial, New Jersey was telling me that look, GSM is optimally going for voice traffic and LT since the time of LT was getting popularity a decade ago. So LT is great for data traffic, so why can't have a radio existing supporting both. So my thought that I agree with what P mentioning spec efficiency is very important. Spectrum is always scarce in availability given the demand and we just going, so I expect an application our radios is a possibility that depending upon the type of applications that the radio is, the space station is the first entry point of the traffic. There could be application aware radios and choosing appropriate technologies, again with the AI is going to be a big level here. So I do expect a multi technology ran existing in a totally different form and optimized for different types of applications as it serve. So I do agree with that vision that it might is a definite possibility.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (06:58):
Yeah. Thanks so much Sarat. It's going to be interesting to see what the operators do offer off the back of this to their customers. Thanks for the comments on that first opening question. Now we've got another question here that moves the conversation into the private domain. Let me read the question out. Will the increased use of private 5G over time contribute to the development of technology and apps for the public ran sector or will it be of little practical significance? Okay. Robert, are we able to come across to you and get your thoughts about how private networks and RAN usage may impact public use?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (07:41):
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think one of the growth opportunities for open RAN in general is certainly enterprise private networks, not least because of the sheer variety of form factors that different enterprise contexts might well require even within a given campus or side or manufacturing side or any other facility, healthcare facility, I think there will be a natural desire to want to tune the physical construction of the RAN to suit a wide variety of environments. I think what the question is getting at, is there going to be a kind of flow back upstream from those requirements back into operator scale? Macro ran, I'm not sure there's going to be, I think the foundations of open ran are there in the 5G standard itself and even elements of it, it's 4G in terms of the ization of the RAN in general open ran at the end of the day is about fundamentally about supply chain and about desegregation as well as a technical level. I'm not sure that we'll see where the tail wagging the dog as far as development of technologies and so on goes, I think we'll see enterprise applications, enterprise applications over ran, certainly use some of the things that I know we'll talk about. I'm sure at some point in this conversation that are coming out of the RIC space and so on, I'm not sure it will go back upstream in the other direction.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (09:13):
Yeah, thanks so much Robert. It's an interesting question and I'm sure that's what they're getting at is whether or not that development's going back upstream. Thank you for that. And Sarat, did you want to come in and add some thoughts to this one?

Sarat Puthenpura, ONF (09:24):
Yes, sure. So I believe the private 5G is going to be a big catalyst innovation in this area. There are two barriers that in my opinion, that we need to overcome. Once you overcome that, I think there could be a big push or a little bit plethora of innovation in this area. So the first one is, lemme back up a little bit. So I was talking to a manufacturing facility, a small manufacturing facility in the United States. So they use wifi and one of the reasons they don't want to do 5G is startup costs and they don't have how you would deploy this one. So in this case I think the open source is going to be a big help in my opinion. So that small manufacturers, which I think going to be a lot more in many countries who could benefit immediately from this private 5G to get rid of the wifi limitations.

(10:36):
So if you have a significant or appropriate level of open source available, they could probably deploy by buying a low cost R use and get into the game. And the second one is the operational piece of it. I mean people are used to simplify the operational nature of wifi. So you need to put enough automation capabilities so that it'll be self-starting and self-optimizing and operating. There could be the need for innovations of operational simplicity in operating FIG network assuming that these two barriers. Another thing is a spectrum. Of course we use unlicensed people that use unlicensed CBR but more availability spectrum. It could also be very helpful. So once it happens that I believe that there'll be a lot of deployment of 5G in the industry, that will be a big push to have innovations in this area. That's my view.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (11:41):
Great, thanks very much for those comments Sara. Atten, I think I just saw this morning some research suggesting that manufacturing would account for about 50% or so of private 5G in the five years time or thereabouts. Thanks for those comments. We'll move on to our next question I think because as I say, we have had a lot of questions in and there's more coming in as we speak. How seriously should we take the security problems that come with RAN supply chain diversification and how is the industry reacting? Well we had a couple of questions on similar themes, so I've just picked one there, but this security aspect, Prakash, can I come to you and get your thoughts first?

Prakash Desai, Wind River (12:22):
Great question and very timely, especially as we move towards disaggregation and separating hardware and software opening up the different interfaces in the ran, of course Open the RAN brings us the best of the breed. Somebody actually gave a good analogy that open the RAN is akin to a Lego block kind of a model wherein you pick and choose the right set of blocks when you choose the right set of blocks. It comes with definitely a certain amount of risk. Risk in terms of opening up the interfaces risk in terms of opening up ports, especially to vulnerabilities to hackers, to other threats. So yes, security threat is real even when you outsource the software and hardware, there are certain aspects of outsourcing and bringing those different hardware, firmware drivers and software together that introduce new elements of risk in the solution. So the threat is real and the industry is fully aware of that.

(13:37):
So what is being done is there are, the way the security is handled is twofold. One is at an organization level where there is a organization level threat assessment being done right from assessing the CV vulnerabilities, assessing the threat, having zero trust policies inbuilt into their IT framework. And second and probably most important is the security that is being addressed at the product level wherein at every stages of design, develop, deploy and maintain those four phases of network deployment and management. There are security aspects that are being considered, whether it is again having zero trust policies in the design, having vulnerability assessments being done at every design right from the hardware signing of the software codes, making sure that the secrets and the directories and the registries that are in the code are well protected. Making sure that the design and the development is being done considering security as one of the top items of the design tenets. So all these different, how do I say all these different nuts and bolts are in place today to ensure that while we open up the networks, while we open up the interfaces, we definitely address security to a level that the developers and the operators are confident of deploying these open networks.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (15:17):
Great, thanks very much for those comments pash. And let me go straight across to Robert and ask you what are the security aspects you are seeing with RAN supply chain diversification?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (15:31):
Yeah, look, it's interesting when we wind the clock back for three years or so, I think security was being promoted as one of those things that is used to frighten people about open, ran to every new technology involves some additional risk factor and the whole job of the industry is to identify it and find ways to resolve it. There are clearly additional risks, new risks as you move from a single supply chain into what is a multi-vendor supply chain. Inherently in any part of the business the same risks apply to the use of any other third party software is provenance. You can't be absolutely guaranteed of. So the nature of the risks I think is well understood. I think the industry has got a good handle on this and it is acknowledged so it is being taken seriously. I think when you consider that one of the big proponents of open ran right now is the US Department of Defense that they're clearly going to have a very significant interest in addressing security concerns.

(16:41):
Also, let's not forget we have large scale open ran cloudified networks running at scale out in the wider market. I'm thinking of people at Rakuten and Dish and so on for whom security is obviously going to be an enormous priority for them. So those companies are sharing some of their expertise as well, some of their findings and best practices. I think there's a difference between something that's intrinsically secure and then the additional practices that you put around that. So particularly around things like CI ICD pipelines and the management of where software is coming from, all that kind of governance stuff, which is just best practice in any kind of distributed software development environment. So to answer the question as asked, yes, the industry is taking it seriously. I think you're seeing investment by governments in particular to ensure that open RAN can be deployed in a secure as possible way. But security as you know is a never ending threat. The key requirement is constant vigilance and never to make the assumption that what you have is intrinsically secure, but always to be asking the question where is the potential risk, what is potential threat and how we neutralize it.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (17:50):
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much Robert and I think this is one of these concerns that often takes a long time to get across to the wider community that it's being addressed and there is awareness of it. Thank you very much for those comments. Before we go on to another audience question though, I do want to check in on our poll, our audience poll for the future of run summit. And the question we are asking this week is, which are the most important areas of focus for the open run community during the next 12 months? And you should be able to see here we go, the real-time results, well not results votes so far are appearing on the screen to my right there early days on the poll, but operator commitment to wide scale commercial rollouts is certainly, certainly taking the lead very much a get on with it statement.

(18:46):
I think that now if you've yet to vote and perhaps you don't agree with the votes you're seeing so far, please have your say vote. We're going to keep the polls open until the end of this week, right? As I say, we still have time for more questions, there's more coming in. Here's the next one, this is about the RIC and Robert you mentioned we might get a question about the RIC earlier. There are two types of RAN intelligent controller, the RIC, what are the latest developments for both the real time RIC and the non-real time RIC? And is this still a growth area? Sarat, I'm going to come to you first. What can you tell us about the development of the RICs and whether or not it's still an area we should be invested in?

Sarat Puthenpura, ONF (19:36):
Yes, let me relate to this question to the polls. We just saw, if you look at the top of the line is operator adoption and second one is TCO reduction. So let's approach this from these points of view. So if you look at the oral architecture, the most revolutionary contribution is the RIC itself and especially the near. But the problem that we are facing is that the near R heavily depends upon the E two interface, which is probably the least matured and slowly progressing and also is way intrusive into the land from the, for an operations team perspective, it's just getting right into the node. So if you look at that one non break, which is sitting above the, I would say interfacing into the node in a kind of a known intrusive fashion will get more traction in terms of operator reductions as far as I can see around.

(20:42):
And also you should be able to put a lot of TCO reduction applications as our app are the applications that nont support and similarly xap are the one supported by T. So when you come to the TCO reduction and operator adoption, these to big points that we saw, I would say non RT could get more traction in the immediate days ahead. That's because not many killer application which revenue making needs subsequent decisions in controlling the network. So whereas near accepts they support subsecond decisions but when it comes to TZO reductions, a good many of them can be accomplished with the higher latencies over seconds. So from this point of view would say there could be increasing appetite for operators to adopt non-art risk and supporting associated TCO reduction use cases. That's where I see would things are going. And also from an operation point of view, as I mentioned, it is not really insing intrusive to the brand and also operators are used to operating so on self-organizing network and LTE and previous and 3g, so on and so forth.

(22:14):
So I would say that a significant activity, especially the application of A ML, could help in advancing the development of our apps and hence non in the near future. And the cool thing is that this can be for the cot, CO reduction and RA can support both traditional network and orran. The only difference is the interface. When it comes to orran, you use O one interface as they call and when it comes to traditional ran, you could do some custom interface between the SMO non RT slash R app to the emss which support which controls the rank. So I believe with the strong appetite for ai, MLS and TCO reductions, AAPS will take more and non would take more place in the central stage in the upcoming days and then later on atic when they have killed lot of moneymaking applications, which you need low latency, which hopefully will happen. I think that's a chronology. I see.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (23:26):
Great, Sarat, thank you very much for addressing that question. I do wonder at times if they would benefit the industry would benefit if these two RICs were positioned slightly further apart or the naming of them at least made it a bit clearer because there was this divergence about what they do and how they're being accepted and used, which probably wasn't there a few years ago. It's interesting how it's developing. Thank you very much for that. We'll move on to our next viewer question then, and this is about hardware. Lemme read this one out. What are the hardware bottlenecks preventing us from opening the RAN is open, ran solely about interfaces and standardization. Well Prakash, are you able to help our view out on this question?

Prakash Desai, Wind River (24:12):
Thank you guy. I think I'm going to answer this question by splitting the RAN and the core or essentially the real time and the non-real time functions. Desegregation definitely helps. Some of the open ran promises as ED earlier was basically scale economies meaning leverage the courts hardware platform so that the hardware or the RAN becomes cheaper. Second is innovation and the third one is deploying services faster and basically getting best of the breed like we talked earlier. Now specific to hardware, hardware is not necessarily bottle like, but when you talk about certain functions that need to be implemented on the ran, there are aspects such as high availability, low latency, high performance for the VDU that has to be inbuilt by certain specific layer one acceleration required for 5G special drivers for the network interfaces that connect to the radio. That is timing and sync that need to be considered.

(25:26):
So the hardware is slowly evolving. So as we speak, there is cos hardware platform available today and is no longer the bottleneck. In fact, from our customer base I can tell you that today we have a virtualized RAN that is deployed nationwide in all the different topologies such as rural urban, massive MIMO deploying 5G advanced feature set at one of the top tier one customers in us, which is Verizon. We also have many tier one examples such as TELUS and other carriers in Europe and Asia. So all in all I do not see hardware as a bottleneck for Deploy Open ran. Not only that, I am also actually seeing more advancements coming in the hardware in terms of supporting our architecture. There is a talk about supporting GPUs. There is a new hardware coming in from Intel, which was Zion six recently launched during Mobile World Congress, which is coming with a built-in AI engine, higher number of cores, more efficiency per core. So all this different innovation that's happening on the hardware side, I do not believe that hardware is a bottleneck in deploying open ran. In fact it's the other way I see the COZ hardware being a catalyst or an accelerator to deploy open ran.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (26:59):
Great, thank you Prakash, that's a good clear message to the audience there sorting out their concerns about what this might see as a bottlenecks to further adoption. That's great. Let us quickly see what else has come in from our audience then here's another question. Can telcos now run RAN workloads at scale on the public cloud or is this simply an unrealistic proposition? Well Robert, we've talked about running ran workloads on the public cloud for a while. What's the current situation? What are your views?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (27:39):
Yeah, look, I think there are clear examples of where this is already happening. I think you're seeing examples like Dish obviously has been a major supporter of using AWS to run its functions and obviously you've got Rakuten running in not in public cloud, hybrid cloud infrastructure. I think it's more of what we're seeing is some of this still testing and proving out cycles to figure out what works best. Where does it make sense to have things in either public or private cloud. I think by nature telcos are cautious about committing, committing to pulling their RAN functions into public cloud. That's understandable. So we're certainly seeing some tests in there, but there's a number of different vendors doing this and these are not small operators. You've got like Telefonica and so on Orange working with people like Nokia and others to test these functions out. So it is something that's happening again, like with the last question, I don't think that the architecture or the hardware is necessarily the bottleneck here.

(28:39):
I think there's enough evidence to say this is certainly feasible. The question is what makes most sense for a given operator given their particular circumstances, the geography and topography of their coverage and so on. And let alone the questions about customer experience and service quality that you get and what makes most sense. So it's not that it's a unrealistic idea, I think it is a very considerable idea in terms of worth considering as an option, but I think it'll be a while before we make that transition. At the end of the day, I think part of what operators want from open ran is a clear benefit to end customers and does that make sense? And that's the first driver. I think the second driver is operational cost production. You saw TCO as a factor in the survey. I think there's still a lot of concern around that.

(29:30):
So again, as with a lot of things around public cloud, where does it make sense to put any workload in public cloud? Where does it make sense to keep it in your own data center? So there's different varieties of workloads and behaviors that determine whether one or the other makes more sense. RAN is just one of those workloads. I think in response to the last question as well, the amount of new technology that's becoming available that is coming into public cloud, you the different silicone and chips are coming in there. There's a lot of progress in there. So again, the capabilities of public cloud are constantly evolving and rapidly evolving. So I think the idea that any workload would be from a technical point of view, not realistic to run in public cloud I think is a lot of old fashioned idea. The question is what makes sense? It's definitely a choice.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (30:18):
Great. Thanks very much Robert. And as you say, it depends very much on the particular circumstances of individual Togo as well, their circumstances. We're going to come to both over the guests as well. But Prakash, let's come to you first. What are your thoughts on this question?

Prakash Desai, Wind River (30:31):
I think hosting on public cloud is no longer a novel idea. It is possible and as Robert pointed out, Telefonica and a couple others, tier one carriers have shown that it is possible. What I want to point out though is hosting a core network, worse hosting RAN functions on public cloud. I think there is a huge difference when it comes to hosting core network or 5G core functions or even for that matter, virtualized core components has been there since many, many years now and is proven. And what public hyperscalers have to offer is highly scalable compute function, large storage functions, high reliability, geo redundancy. So those are all the different things or different design aspects of a core network. However, when it comes to RAN and especially the DU part of the ran, there are certain aspects such as real-time performance, low latency, consistent and reliable and predictable latency with clear or high synchronization to the radios, right?

(31:49):
These are some of the aspects that I believe is a challenge for public clouds to offer, especially when it comes to the way that topology is, meaning distributed networks where you have 30, 40, 60,000 sites being deployed nationwide. It's a little bit challenge for public hyperscalers to go to the edge. And where I see the network evolving is it's going to be the future is towards intelligent edge network. I see most of the monetization happening at the edge. Most of the AI functions now being offered at the edge. Edge is where you will see the innovation and evolution happening. And that is where you need, you need the highest performing solution or the system lowest latency. And then proving the concept or deploying a hundred, 200,000 nodes is okay, but when you have to deploy at scale, you're talking about 40, 50, 60,000 nodes deployed nationwide. I believe hyperscalers is going to be a challenge. It has to be the cos platform managed by the operators themselves.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (33:09):
Great. Thanks for that Prakash. It's thanks for that answer and it's well worth pointing out the differences there between cloud and run hosting. Thank you. And Sarat, let's come across to you. What are your thoughts about this question of public cloud hosting for the run?

Sarat Puthenpura, ONF (33:25):
Yes, I think whatever I wanted to say, mostly P said that was mostly wanted to say that as it comes to the edge, things become a little bit of challenging when you intend to use public cloud, especially as I said rightly pointed out the the schedulers. I mean that you need to be carefully thought out. And also one other thing I want to add is the low latency applications, especially we talked about the R, the neurotic R sitting close into the node and the next apps low if they, I mean they inherently need very low latency. When you see such need happens in a wider scale, I think the public cloud could face some challenges there, but by properly architecting this in an intelligent way with the edge cloud versus follow out of the edge, one could potentially solve these problems. But these are the potential challenges that one could see when public cloud is used in the land side especially.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (34:38):
Absolutely. Thanks very much Sarat for that. Thanks everyone. Let's have a look, see if we can pull out one or maybe squeeze in two final questions from the audience. There's this question here I'd like to read out. How much has open RAN really been deployed in telecom's networks and are there regional differences to deployments? Roberts, from your perspective, are you able to give us some insight into the extent of open RAN deployments and any regional differences?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (35:13):
Yeah, sure. I mean it's definitely happening in places. It's not yet the full on conversion to open ran open RAN is still working very much within the RAN replacement cycles the operas have and they're all at slightly different stages. Obviously there are the best examples come out from Japan. That's really where the big initial deployments with Rakuten and then ETT has been part of that as well in US Dish. Obviously a pioneer there. I think again, depending exactly on your definition of open RAN and there's some dispute over that. What are at t doing and Verizon doing, certainly cloud RAN and open RAN are factors of their deployments. We are seeing that TELUS in Canada again is a major open RAN rollout in a Brownfield context, which is, I know we've been writing about that recently. That's very significant and very fast moving. We're seeing a lot less in Europe, a lot of interest and steady progress, but it's still pretty early stage.

(36:16):
The European operators, the large European operators have been just taking their time to do their research despite the fact that they're pretty enthusiastic about it. But Deutsche Telecom, Telefonica, Vodafone, orange are all proponents of open ran to a greater electric extent, but in terms of large scale rollout, they're going to do that within the cycle of current ran replacement. So I think Europe is probably lagging relative to others. Obviously in China there's very little call for open ran in direct sense. This is a different model. Different markets works in a different way. So we've got a long way to go before Open RAN becomes the dominant deployment architecture. But it is a direction of travel that we think is inevitable just because of the nature of the industry, the desires and the pressures to create greater diversity in the supply chain and to get access to this data as we've referenced several times in this conversation, access to the data that will fuel machine learning out in the RAN and so on. So we think these are, the direction of travel for Open RAN is pretty much assured, especially because they're very largest vendors are getting behind it essentially for the most part. So yes, but we're really just still relatively early days on the large scale deployment of Open ran. But there are examples where it is happening and those examples I think can give other operators a good indication of what's involved and how the industry can learn from that and where do we go next.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (37:50):
Great. Thanks very much for that Robert. And I'll just take this opportunity to remind the viewer who sent you that question that they should take a look at the Vanguard series of programs research that we did earlier this year based around TELUS and what they were doing with Open Ran is a lot of information and insights in there. We are approaching the end of the program, but there's another question that's just come in. I'm just going to sneak this one in I think because it really builds on what Robert was saying there. Lemme read this question out and Robert, I may come to you first if I can because it builds on what you were saying about Open ran. The question is, is there inevitability around telcos that will shift to a V RAN and cloud RAN model? Is it inevitable? Will they move away from Purpose Built ran? So I wonder if maybe we can address this question about just how inevitable it is that we see the V ran and cloud ran evolution. Robert, can you expand on the open ran comments with this one?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (38:54):
Yeah, so I think part of what's changing in Open Ran and RAN generally is just the establishment of more choice of greater options. Up until relatively recently RAN has been a question of maybe single sourcing or dual sourcing. It's been a choice of vendor for most operators. Now what we're seeing is that the options available for RAN are expanding. It's not only a choice of vendor A or vendor B, it's a question about architectures, about cloudification, about silicon, about layers of software and so on. So I think what that means is that we're going to see more of that choice being exercised. It's clear that there is still a significant economic value to the traditional RAN structure. So even those operators who have committed to open ran have done it for part of their network but not necessarily committing to all of it. There are one or two exceptions for various specialized reasons, but most of our operators looking at Open RAN are saying this is one of the things that we will use in the future.

(40:06):
So I think, as I say, I think the direction of travel over the long term is pretty much assured because it's clear that Cloudification of RAN virtualization of RAN does offer greater flexibility. Dolls offer benefits but they have to be weight up against just that TCO thing, which is such a strong, such a dominant factor for operators considering their investments. So I think it will be the case that we'll have a steady substitution if you like, of cloud RAN and open ran against a substitution of that in replacement for traditional ran. But it will take a long time and there still will be places where traditional RAM makes the most sense for particular locations for even particular operators. But it just will take time. But I think the industry as a whole, I think is pretty assured of this direction towards cloudification and open interfaces.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (41:04):
Fantastic. Thanks very much Robert for that. And yeah, I'd love to see more clarity and insight into TCO. Maybe we'll get more from the industry in the years ahead. We'll come to the two guests as well. Prakash, let me come to you next. Is it inevitable that the industry moves towards vRAN and Cloud ran?

Prakash Desai, Wind River (41:23):
Thank you guy. Yes, I believe so. I mean Robert made some great points. He gave some great references about Verizon, TELUS, Telefonica, word of one in the Europe and I believe that's where the technology is headed. And let me also cite certain things. The hesitation when open run came about a few years ago, one of the hesitation or limitation that was talked about was open RAN is not suitable for dense urban deployment where you have multiple bands, multiple radios with massive MIMO being deployed. It's only suitable for rural single band eight by eight radio. And what I want to share is we have today in Verizon deployed a 60 40, 64 R massive MIMO in New York. I mean what can be more dense urban than New York, Manhattan area. And they have deployed some advanced 5G Beam forming functions, uplink multi-user MIO functions. So a lot of these good things that come or that 5G has to offer has been deployed on Open ran.

(42:34):
Another great example that Robert pointed out was Boost, which is one of our biggest customer and the first truly nationwide large scale open ran network was commercial. And what it has shown is the benefits of open ran. Today we at Wind River are going in and replacing just the cas platform of the complete network. I mean that wouldn't have been possible in a traditional ran. We are seeing great momentum in Europe with Vodafone, Dou Telecom. Vodafone is now actually expanding into other properties within Europe. We are seeing great traction in Japan. So all these references show that open ran is the way to go. I think what the carriers are looking for or waiting for rather is some kind of a compelling event, whether it's end of life of their current hardware or deploying additional or reforming their spectrum to roll out new network or expansion. I think those events definitely will move towards cloud ran, open ran kind of deployment.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (43:48):
Great. Thanks for those insights Prakash. Thank you very much. And Sarat, let's wrap up this panel with your thoughts about how inevitable vRAN and cloud ran may be.

Sarat Puthenpura, ONF (44:00):
I also completely agree with that. TCO would define the direction. So to further expand on that, okay, we have vendor diversity, cloudification, all that. Would that reduce the capital cost? Would it go below what the traditional RAN vendors can offer from the pricing point of view? That's the first question. And secondly, what is the operational complexity? I mean, you can all agree that this is a much more complex Segregator ran and cloud ran and open ran and all that. They increase the complexity of operation. So what we need to see is a lot of automation in the operation and the TCO, the operational costs should at least be equal to what the traditional brand is. And at the same time, performance parity. So when you have these multiple components, multiple vendors, the integration, all this stuff. So the performance of the network is to be closely watched and then managed properly. So the performance parity, the cost reduction in both capital and operational costs, that would guide the direction in which all the six are going. That's what my observation and my opinion also.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (45:34):
Great, Sarat, thank you very much for those insights. Thank you everyone for those comments on that final question. We are out of time now. Thanks so much to all of you for joining us for this live program and that's the wrap for this year's future of RAN summit. Thank you to all of you who submitted questions. We did try and cover as many as possible in the limited time available. And thank you also to our speakers and sponsors and viewers for supporting the DSP Leaders Summit series. Now next month we will be broadcasting live from Windsor for our seventh annual DSP leaders world forums flagship in-person event. And we'll be streaming two full days of panels, interviews and discussions. Full details are on our website register telecom TV to access the live streams, the on-demand content, as well as the polls and the question forms. So please join us on Tuesday, June the third, and Wednesday June the fourth for the DSP Leaders World Forum 2025. For now though, thank you so much for watching and goodbye.