Modernising legacy RAN for performance and efficiency

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Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:23):
Hello, you're watching the future of RAN and our discussion on modernizing legacy RAN for performance and efficiency. I'm Guy Daniels and welcome to this year's RAN Summit. Now, most operators run extensive legacy RAN footprints and modernization remains essential for capacity growth and cost control. But what are the best upgrade strategies? Which automation tools can help to extend service life and how do you prepare for an AI enabled future? Well, I'm delighted to say that joining me on the program to discuss the evolution of RAN Architecture are Neil McCray, Chief Technology and Information Officer for Citi Fiber and Beth Cohen, telco industry analyst at Luth Computer. Hello, good to see you both again. Thanks so much for taking part in our show today. First question I'd like to ask then is what are the most effective ways that telcos can improve performance in large legacy RAN estates without resorting to full replacement programs?

(01:36):
Neil, first of all, welcome back to the show. It's been a while. What are your views on this?

Neil McRae, CityFibre (01:42):
Yeah, guys, it's great to be back. Always good to talk to you guys and give a view on this. I mean, from a RAM perspective, I kind of start at the ... Really, what have you got and actually what don't you need? So you're not going to turn new things on, but what can you actually turn off to enable more spectrum and more capabilities to be used with your existing RANs? So we've seen this over the last few years. Lots of service providers refarming and deploying technologies that allow them to move away from 2G, 3G. And I think that's going really well in terms of the progress made, certainly in Europe, in the US and some parts of Asia. I think there's more to do in that space. Here in the UK, we still have 2G running. And I think to really push forward on coverage and capacity, releasing that spectrum and deploying it for 4G and 5G, I think will make a massive difference.

(02:44):
I think the other one is, and it's not ... In some ways you might think it's about building more radio, but I think it's about augmentation. We see many service providers here in the UK in particular, but across Europe and in the US starting to deploy small cells. So augmenting the capacity at a street level, using street furniture, using some of the lamp posts that are out there to really kind of regenerate or augment their spectrum deployments and bringing that higher bandwidth spectrum down to street level where buildings don't get in the way. So you're getting much more out of your overall legacy RAN whilst actually doing small incremental upgrades. We see telcos do lots of that in terms of how they're rebuilding their RAN when things like they get a notice to quit on a building because the building has got some building work or there's been redeveloped and we see small cells play there.

(03:50):
And there's great companies like Ontex here in the UK that do a tremendous amount of work with the mobile operators to enhance that experience at the street level. And to me, that's one of the best values, the best kind of dollar for your bet way of enhancing the RAM, but also taking out some of the legacy and then improving what's going on in the RAN. Do you really understand how your RAN's performing? Because if you don't understand that, it's hard to make it better. So where are you starting from? What is your unvarnished veneer of the RAN and where do you see that RAN over the next two or three years? And we kind of go into what I might call the twilight years of 5G, which is kind of scary to say that, but we're probably into second in some places, third generation 5G technology.

(04:49):
And with lots of people at MWC, last month started to talk about 6G. So those are some ways to optimize your RAN for today. Great.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (04:59):
Thanks very much, Neil. That is a scary thought about 5G. The years tick by. Beth, we've heard from near there a couple of interesting solutions or several interesting solutions there. What are you seeing over the US market where there is a substantially large installed base of RAN?

Beth Cohen, Luth Computer (05:18):
So in the US markets, I think it's a little bit different because the US market got into 5G quite early. There was a big push about 10 years ago. So a lot of the 5G infrastructure is getting a little long in the tooth. Now what's another interesting thing is the US did turn off not only 2G, but 3G as well. So really what's left is 4G, 4G, LTE, and 5G. And so the US recovered that spectrum, of course, and redeployed it. It's also using many of the ... I know Verizon is using the densification approach, so particularly this applies in the city areas where there's a lot more buildings, so you get interference and other things. So in many of the city centers, there's been a lot of densification done. So it's additional locations, as Neil mentions, the lampposts. In fact, there's one within Siteline on my house that's on a ... We call them telephone poles in the US.

(06:44):
So there's been a lot more efficiency just by putting the antennas down at the right level so you get a much stronger signal. And of course, the densification also gives a higher bandwidth capabilities as well. I also see, obviously, there's software upgrades to make the spectrum work better, more efficiently. And we also have done a lot of work around ... There's a big problem with when you have large scale like football games and such things in stadiums where we've gone in and done a whole lot of work around making those types of venues where you might have 60,000 people all using their cell phones, of course, in one location. So that's also been an area that's been quite fruitful. And we're also working on the IoT devices deploying REDCap and some of the other more efficient use of the spectrum. So all in combination, everything ... You have to do everything in combination is kind of the bottom line.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (08:16):
Yeah. Thanks very much, Beth. As you're rightly saying, there's a lot of solutions there, but do the modern combination, not just relying on the one. Neil, let's come back to you. You wanted to add something to this.

Neil McRae, CityFibre (08:27):
Yeah. I mean, there's also some really simple basics. What's the bottom 5% performing cell sites? Is it actually better to turn them off? Is your tilt right? Is your massive Mimode deployment ... This has been the year of massive Mimewood deployment. Have you actually gone and measured how well they're working and compared your best work insights to your least good work insights? I mean, they're literally free of charge upgrades if you're able to get something out of them. Quite often everyone's running to ... We want to build AI, but actually just a one degree tilt can make all the difference to performance. So as I said, looking at what's there and how it's performing and facing into the bottom 5%, which in any organization should be more than easy to do and seeing how you take that bottom 5% out or you improve it. And that kind of a tremendous difference and probably not cost you much more than a few truck rolls to a site.

(09:36):
Thanks,

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (09:37):
Neil. And free of charge updates and low cost updates, fantastic news for operators, but let's move on. And what about those upgrades that aren't free of charge? There's a lot of community push towards automation, some techniques, AI assisted optimization. There's a lot of solutions that Telcos can buy. How far can they go? What's their role in extending the lives of RAN?

Neil McRae, CityFibre (10:05):
Yeah. I mean, I think all of those are about understanding the information that you've got and kind of presenting it in a way that allows you to act on it. So we have the same actionable insight and more and more of the tooling there is giving you that. Actually, how well is this performing? And actually partnering with some of the network monitoring companies like UCLA, for example, where they can give you some real insight on what actual end user customers are seeing. And many service providers have got their own app that runs on your phone that also gives them insight to how well it's performing. So collecting that information and then having a way to actually work with the information, because the network's piling in tons of data, how do you translate that into something that's actually, you can give to an engineer or a technician and say, "Hey, we need to look at this site and let Lithgow because every time a customer goes to it, they get loss of handover problems." So there's some really, again, some what I would call low hanging fruit outcomes where if you take that data, how is it telling you how handovers are going between sites and the synchronization between sites so that those handovers work well?

(11:22):
Is there something going on with a specific type of device that actually tweaking the device parameters might give you a big one? And certainly in my days at BT, that was definitely something that we saw benefit from doing. So I think in that respect, you've got quite a lot of tools and then leveraging AI as a kind of standalone number cruncher or AI embedded network management, such that you're actually able to drill into common themes and test certain hypothesis in maybe a digital twin that says, actually this is by doing this till or by ... We've seen this issue that we know is fixed by a bug fix or by doing greater site to site coordination, either using SON or other technologies so that those sites can work really well. The other thing we shouldn't forget, the wireless network is heavily dependent on the fixed network.

(12:25):
Sometimes we forget about that. So is your backhaul working right? Have you got enough capacity? At City Fiber, we support a lot of operators across the UK with backhaul. Have you got the right speeds? Have you got the right connectivity into the right location so you can build those small cells or you can enhance the deployments that you've got? So are all of those things right? And then actually just simply using basic AI tools, something like Claude where actually I want to compare all the configurations across every single RAND device. That could be hundreds of thousands of devices. So if you've got one that's slightly not where it should be, it can be quite hard to find that. And this is where the simplest of AI deployments can help you massively to find that outlier of, why is this area not performing like all the other areas?

(13:18):
And it could be something as simple as a config issue, or as I mentioned before, perhaps not the right till, or the age old issue that's plagued mobile operators for years, it's summertime and all the leaves have grown back on the trees. You would not underestimate how the environment that you're in can affect performance.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (13:38):
Oh yeah, absolutely, Neil. Yeah. I do recall a deep conversation with the ordinance survey a few years ago about this and 3D mapping to alleviate these issues. Beth, we talk about data an awful lot on telecom TV summits, collecting the data, using the data, creating, as Neil says, these actionable insights. If we look at automation and all these tools and technologies, how far can we leverage those to extend RAND life?

Beth Cohen, Luth Computer (14:07):
I think we can extend them quite a bit. And I want to build on Neil's comment about the leaves. Another problem is rain, because it can actually really mess up the spectrum. So I think AI, I think that's a really good use of AI. I tend to be kind of skeptical about AI, but for many of some of the sillier uses currently, but I think using AI to track patterns of RAN is actually looking for hotspots or misconfigurations or everything is actually a really good use of the technology as it evolves. And another area, of course, is running the IRAN as efficiently as possible and looking for traffic patterns. And traffic patterns are changing. We still have the, everybody sleeps at night for the most part, but there are not that Gentic AI has really taken off yet, but I think that that is going to change some of the traffic patterns.

(15:34):
During COVID, of course, the traffic patterns changed massively because people weren't going to work, they were staying home. So I think we can use AI to help manage those changes in patterns over time and make sure that our equipment is running as efficiently as possible and obviously using the spectrum as efficiently as possible as well.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (16:04):
Great. Thanks very much, Beth. I'm going to come back to Neil, but I'm going to extend it out while I come to you as well, because this leads onto our next question about any other factors that we should consider, because we have talked about a lot of solutions and possible solutions during this discussion so far. But I'll come to you because I know you want to add a point on that, and then maybe we can think about any of the factors that play into modernization plans.

Neil McRae, CityFibre (16:26):
Yeah. I mean, one of the other big changes in the last few years has been the deployment of fixed wireless access over 5G. And I think it's one of the success stories of 5G. We've always been looking for that killer use case that printed money. And one of the big use cases has been FWA and how you deploy that into the customer can really have an impact on the ... Can really have an impact on the usage of your RAN. So if you're doing an aerial or antenna based FWA where you're actually putting something on the roof or on the side of the building, that can dramatically improve the performance of the RAN. I mean, hugely. But the other activity is to actually offload that traffic to a more focused FWA solution. So there's many operators out there, a number of vendors that offer a much more bits perhaps improved FWA solution where if you've got a huge number of customers in one neighborhood where they're on wireless, actually, if you're able to use an FWA solution that gets you a better return and allows you to free up the capacity on the mobile network for other users, that's definitely another thing to consider.

(17:54):
And then partnering with a fixed operator, how can you work with the local fiber provider, the local carrier to perhaps offload some of this traffic? And again, we see operators doing that across Europe and in the US. And then also the other big win here is indoor traffic. So today, a lot of mobile traffic is actually on wifi and you're still using your iPhone, but you're at home and you leverage your wifi or you're in the office. And again, with the right deployment of wifi or the right deployment of internal small cells, you can offload a lot of traffic from the macro network. That helps you in two ways. One that allows you to reuse that capacity for people that are out in the street, but also to send a Beam indoors actually consumes a lot more energy. So you're able to not only turn down the capacity, but you're actually able to turn down the energy that you're using.

(19:00):
And I've seen operators actively target certain buildings for small cell densification so that they can offload the macro network, particularly in places where it's harder to build more macro network. A great example of that is the South Bank and here in London, you have the River Thames there, you have a lot of what I would call historical monuments and very hard types of locations where it's difficult to build infrastructure. With targeted indoor build and with targeted small cells, you can really make a tremendous impact on the quality of experience. And again, we see the operators here in the UK do that and across the world, we've also seen it in places like Hong Kong and Japan.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (19:50):
Great. Thanks so much for that, Neil. And Beth, I come across to you. Any other factors that you think we should be considering here?

Beth Cohen, Luth Computer (19:57):
Yeah, I think the factor, Neil mentioned FWA and I think a lot of carriers when FWA first rolled out, which was about five or six years ago, I think a lot of carriers did not really think through that FWA works closer to the way you would expect cable or fiber works in terms of the traffic patterns. And so it was running the FWA over the cell sites, but it's fixed traffic, right? It's going to stay at whatever the location. And Neil mentioned the outdoor antennas and the roof antennas. That was actually something that we ran into where we were selling FWA and it was like these indoor things and like 60% of the sites actually needed outdoor roof antennas to really work properly. And site surveys were super important, again, for maximizing the customer experience with actually using this because customers, when they sign up for FWA, they expect it to work just like cable or fiber.

(21:19):
And when you're using your cell phone, yeah, if you get into a rural area, the signal might not be great and people are kind of used to that, but when you're home, you expect to be that signal to work all the time. So that is a factor that I think that many of the carriers have actually kind of come to realize and have changed how the networks are deployed to improve that experience for the customers.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (21:54):
Oh yes, meeting customer expectations.That's very interesting about the site service as well there, Beth. Neil, I'm going to come straight back to you.

Neil McRae, CityFibre (22:02):
Yeah. I mean, the one other thing that I think all mobile operators should be thinking about was, Guy, when we started building these networks back in the 2G, in fact, back in the analog days, we went out and we built the infrastructure in a set number of locations all over the world in London, in New York, in Paris and Tokyo. And actually where we built that infrastructure is actually still a key area of where that infrastructure is today. Part of that was because actually there wasn't enough choice in terms of backhaul or there wasn't enough fiber. And if I fast forward almost 40, maybe 50 years now, we're now in a wall where there are a large number of fiber providers, a large number of infrastructure providers, there's more data centers out there for doing virtualized RAN. And one of the big challenges is that have we really re-engineered the RAN for what today's cities and towns look like?

(23:13):
Because they look very different. If I think of London, the center of London has had a skyscraper, hundreds of skyscrapers up here, and we're still literally using most of the base stations that were there 10 or 20 years ago. And I think mobile operators should be looking at actually, what other sites can I use? Is there a fiber provider there that wasn't there in the past so I can work with them on backhaul or actually do virtualized front haul because the world is very different from a carrier point of view than when we started to build these networks. And I think that's why we're starting to see small cells up here, while we're starting to see more indoor appear because there's competition out there in the fiber wall, which means connecting these buildings from a backhoe perspective starts to make much more sense than what it did maybe five or 10 years ago.

(24:11):
So the fixed world, and quite often it's kind of interesting when you have this kind of seesaw of the fixed world and the wireless world, we still have a lot to learn from each other in terms of what the technology can do that allows a mobile operator to deploy more effectively and also allows a fiber provider to be able to build and get a better return on other assets that they want to deploy. And I think there's a huge amount more to do in that space to really drive the benefits of connectivity. And as we pivot into 6G, and I've said that twice and it kind of worries me a little bit, but I really believe that 6G is about connecting everybody everywhere. Today we still have a big chunk of people that aren't connected, and I think this is something where greater understanding between what the wireless network builders need and what the fixed network builders can offer, I think can really make a big change in the future of the mobile network, both from a cellular point of view, but also in using other technologies like wifi that can equally do as greater job in terms of traffic management, et cetera.

(25:43):
And then we've also got the additional tooling. So we now have AI that allows us to be much more heterogeneous in the solutions that we want to build. In the past, telcos, were cookie cutters, everything looks the same, everything smells the same, everything tastes the same, but actually in the network of the future, if we really want to connect everything and connect them wherever they are, we're going to have to have a much more busier toolbag of solutions that allow us to really show that the network is everywhere. And again, I truly believe the more the network is out there, the more people will use it, the more apps will come and the more demand for network operators will be there. So I think it's an exciting time as we pivot into the pre-AI world into the next AI. And everyone's thinking AI for 6G.

(26:37):
I think there's a lot that AI can do in today's network. And again, we see many operators doing that already.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (26:44):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly, Neil, especially with like four or five years until we see some decent 6G commercial deployments. And as you said, the world changes, environments change. Beth, let me come back to you because I think you'd like to add something here.

Beth Cohen, Luth Computer (26:57):
Yeah. So I wanted to talk about the fact that with the rise of cloud, literally the entire way, Neil sort of touched on it, but it's no longer really a mesh network. It's really gone way much more back toward a hub and spoke type network. So if you think about it, people are using their ... What are they using their cell phones for? They're using it to access apps and those apps are sitting in the cloud. So the traffic patterns are vastly different than they were, let's say, 10 or 20 years ago when people were using their cell phones for making phone calls. And so the networks really need to respond to that. And Neil's comment about the backhaul and making sure the core is solid is spot on. And I know that a lot of operators have invested literally billions of dollars into improving their backhaul and improving their core networks to take advantage or to address the fact that at this point, I'd say the vast amount of traffic is really much more along the lines of hub and spoke type traffic than it has been in the past.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (28:26):
Great. Thanks very much, Beth. Well, I'd just like to move on to a final question because we've talked about modernization, but at what point does Legacy RAN reach its natural end of life and therefore an operator moves away from modernization and towards replacement or upgrade? Beth, have you got any thoughts on whether there is a predefined moment or is it highly dependent on various factors?

Beth Cohen, Luth Computer (28:53):
I think there's a lot of factors that go into it and there's no predefined moment. And also there's the dynamic of the vendors are always going to want to have you upgrade to the latest and greatest. The operators are going to want to squeeze every last bit out of that piece of hardware, but eventually the hardware is going to fail and so it will need to be replaced. But also, we can also talk about the fact that 5G has been around for 10 years in Europe and the US, but there's other parts of the world where 5G's just coming in. So there's some leapfrog effects going on here where technologies in some areas ... And we saw this in the telco with the phones in the US, I think the cell phone uptake in the US was a little slower because Because the US had such a good infrastructure of the traditional POTS lines.

(30:08):
And of course we've gone past that now, but we're seeing this now with areas of the world that are just getting 5G. And so they've kind of leapfrogged with the latest equipment while in the US we're still using, at this point, sometimes 10 year old equipment. So these are all factors that play into us. And of course, the rise of virtualization I think is really key because of course you can upgrade so much easier if it's virtualized. So it's complicated is the final answer, I think.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (30:51):
It often is, Beth, isn't it? It is a complicated one that one. Neil, any thoughts to add about end of life for an existing brand?

Neil McRae, CityFibre (31:00):
Yeah. I mean, 5G was launched here in the UK in May of 2019. And normally in that cycle, you'd be looking at actually what do we replace? But I think the world of hardware and technology's moved on where many operators are rolling out 5G SA, full 5G with all the features. And that's still in many countries, not even starting yet. So the notion of end of life and changing out hardware feels pretty challenging to me. 5G has not been the kind of money spinner that I think many of us hoped it would be. I think partly because of that two pronged approach, non-standalone and standalone. So what we're seeing is a much more software focus of RAND deployment. And you've got things like NGNM where they've put a note to say, "Hey, we really want 6G to be more about software updates than forklifting of hardware." Now, I think the forklift of hardware is inevitable to some extent, but we're going to have similar spectrum bands, maybe some really high spectrum band, which I'm not sure is probably where the value will be at least initially.

(32:28):
So I think it's a very complicated situation. I think the vendors, of course, are thinking, "Hey, we need to sell something to somebody." If you go to China, China's practically got 5G SA 100% of the country. So if you're a vendor in that space, you're probably thinking, "Well, we need to get 6G rolled out soon, otherwise we've got nothing to sell." I'm sure all the vendors are kind of looking towards 6G as the next big revenue opportunity, but I think we need to be careful that we learn actually what is the real value that we're delivering in 6G, such that people feel that they've had a life out of the equipment, let alone be end of life. So we've probably got 5G equipment that's coming up for 10 years old already because the deployment started before the launch and the development started even before that.

(33:27):
But I think this equipment's probably lasted longer than any LRG in terms of its capabilities with some software augments. And the occasional car change that brings feature functionality, but I think as an operator, where the world is right now, you're probably trying to figure out ways to lengthen the deployment value of that equipment, perhaps upgrading your backhaul to 10G to get more out of the spectrum that you've already got, perhaps moving some sells, some of the first generation equipment into less busier zones and then deploying new second generation or third generation equipment into those busy zones. But I think some of the 5G equipment that's out there is probably still going to be with us maybe for another five, maybe even longer than that, five years. But it's a tricky one for operators. And as Beth rightly said, we have some countries literally just launching 5G, probably actually good for them because they're going to launch it with the latest and greatest equipment at probably a much better price than where 5G was back in 2019.

(34:45):
So I think it's a tough one in terms of, have we got the value and actually, do we want to hang on as much as we can with what we've got until we start to see early generation 6G equipment or early generation 6G software upgrades, which many operators I think would welcome.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (35:08):
Neil, that's great. Thanks very much indeed. Now, we have been asking telecom TV viewers for questions on this topic in the lead up to this summit. We're almost out of time, but I do think we've just about got time to squeeze in one with some brief responses if we can, because as I say, we have had some questions from viewers, so it's always good to answer them if you can. One question here we received in, is there a FOMO factor in RAND deployment planning? Does the hype around AI and AI RAN override modernization decisions? Are we a bit guilty of following the hype there? Beth, have you got a brief comment on this?

Beth Cohen, Luth Computer (35:50):
Yeah, I'm seeing that in spades. The hype is like, "Oh yeah, we have to do everything AI, otherwise we'll be left behind, blah, blah, blah." I've been in the business long enough to know that whatever we're doing in AI today, it's not going to look like anything like that in two years, five years. And I'm not saying that there isn't a future for AI, I think there is, but it's been maximum hype for at least two years at this point. So typically technology takes between 10 and 20 years to really mature. And we're really like, what, two, three years in to AI. So we have a good another 10 years before it's going to really start maturing and be just part of the carpet.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (36:56):
Well, there's plenty of companies there who've got a vested interest in continuing that hype. Neil, a comment from you on this one?

Neil McRae, CityFibre (37:03):
Yeah, look, there's a great Dr. McCoy Star Trek quote, "Engineers love to change things." I think it's exciting because we're going into a next generation of telecoms where we have a compute power that we've never had anywhere near the kind of compute power that we've got today. To me, that feels like there's value in that. I think, and the mobile operators or the network operators that extract that value, they're going to win. And at CitiFiber, we're deploying a lot on AI to help us plan fiber routes better to improve our customer journeys. And I think in the RAN, when you're deploying to 8,000 base stations just for a country like the UK, having a third brain to help you with that deployment that can process at a pace that is unimaginable, I can't see the downside in that. Even if you get the odd hallucination, I still think that the vast majority of it's going to help you in terms of where you're deploying and how you're deploying.

(38:12):
So yes, of course there's FOMO. I mean, engineers love to live for FOMO. Everyone, if you're a great engineer, you're already reading about what the future looks like. You learn about the future. You've probably got some app on your computer that you're hacking away to figure out what that future looks like. I think that's the exciting thing about a career in telecommunications is that we really get to play with some fantastic technology. I'm with Beth on some of the hype. I think there's some less well defined use cases that I think you probably need to go away, but I can help but think that in a world where the network is underpinning every single bit of AI, if there's no network, there's no AI, and the world is planning to leverage AI in a big way, that puts us as telecommunication operators front and center to this whole big AI rollout.

(39:07):
And that's why you look at someone like NVIDIA, two years ago, NVIDIA had no presence in the telecommunication industry. Now they're all over it because they understand that the network is crucially important to their mission, which is to deploy this AI. I mean, you've probably got a million videos of me saying this before, but I can't imagine a more exciting time to be in our industry with this amazing commute power and this kind of amazing technology cycle that we're about to go through.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (39:38):
Yes. We have huge opportunity here. Beth, let's come across to you for a quick final comment.

Beth Cohen, Luth Computer (39:44):
Yeah. I just wanted to say that the telecom ... I think the telecoms are catching on to the fact that the network is critical for AI, particularly with the Gentic AI and IoT and pulling all that data out, but I'm not sure the AI companies have really kind of caught on yet. So that, I suspect they will pretty soon, but watch this space.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (40:16):
Yeah. Watch this space in this age of inference that we're about to reap the rewards from, hopefully, possibly. We must leave it there for now though. That's all the time we have. Thank you very much indeed, both of you for talking with us and taking part in the program today. And if you're watching this live as part of our future of RAN Summit, then please do stay with us. Don't go away and join us for the end of Summit wrap up show. And do please take part in our viewer poll. If you have not yet done so, we'll take a look at the vote during the final program today. You can find the full agenda on the Telecom TV website. And if you're watching this on demand, then you'll find links to all the other panels and programs from the future of RAN on the summit homepage on Telecom TV.

(41:02):
For now though, thank you for watching and goodbye.

Please note that video transcripts are provided for reference only – content may vary from the published video or contain inaccuracies.

Panel Discussion

In this panel discussion, our experts explore strategies for maximising existing RAN footprints through spectrum refarming, densification via small cells, and low-cost physical adjustments like antenna tilting. Instead of premature hardware replacements, they advocate for software-led upgrades to optimise traffic patterns and identify performance outliers. This practical approach leverages “actionable insights” to extend hardware lifespan while preparing for a seamless, cost-effective transition toward 6G.

Recorded March 2026

Participants

Beth Cohen

Telco Industry Analyst, Luth Computer

Neil McRae

Chief Technology and Information Officer, CityFibre