Nokia snaps up Juniper’s RIC tech and team

• HPE recently completed its acquisition of Juniper Networks
• But HPE isn’t interested in Juniper’s RAN intelligent controller (RIC) developments
• Nokia, though, likes what the Juniper team developed – it has licensed the tech and hired 45 members of the team
• Is Nokia trying to play catch-up with Ericsson?

Nokia has licensed HPE’s RAN intelligent controller (RIC) technology and hired most of the associated development team to “further strengthen” the giant Finnish vendor’s MantaRay SMO (service management and orchestration) platform and “expand its solutions in AI-driven RAN automation and autonomous networking”. 

Nokia says the agreement is not a financial transaction and that 45 staff have transferred from HPE to Nokia.

The RIC platform being licensed by Nokia had been developed for the emerging Open RAN sector by a team at Juniper Networks, which was recently acquired by HPE. But that technology and team were surplus to HPE’s requirements: Fortunately for most of the associated staff, they now have a role at Nokia’s Mobile Networks division under president Tommi Uitto.

“This licensing deal with HPE will further strengthen our proven MantaRay SMO portfolio by adding these assets and expertise,” stated Uitto. “Our customers worldwide will benefit from the enhanced capabilities of Nokia’s AI-driven automation, orchestration and open ecosystems, enabling them to manage multi-vendor networks more efficiently and prepare for the transition from 5G to 6G.”  

According to Nokia, its MantaRay SMO is a “comprehensive solution for advanced AI-driven, zero-touch automation and is already capable of achieving TM Forum’s autonomous networks level 4 today. It is also fully Open RAN compliant and supports open R1 interface for rApps,” the RAN automation applications that run on a non real-time RIC. 

So why specifically does Nokia want/need the Juniper RIC tech and team? And what does it bring that Nokia doesn’t already have or is unable to develop itself?

We are still waiting to see if Nokia will provide any further insights beyond the high level comments included in its press release. 

What might be the case is that the Finnish vendor may feel it has fallen behind key rival Ericsson in terms of SMO/RIC traction and visibility, and that the Juniper team and tech can enhance its opportunities: During the past year Ericsson has been heavily promoting its SMO capabilities, has revealed multiple operator engagements, and has developed an rApp repository/library.  

What we do know is that the Juniper Networks team, having got into the RIC sector in early 2021 by licencing code developed by Türk Telekom subsidiary Netsia, developed a non real-time RIC, a key element in a service management and orchestration (SMO) framework that performs broader data collection and network provisioning tasks. It had also developed several of its own rApps. 

The Juniper team had also developed a near real-time RIC platform. This ‘flavour’ of RIC operates separately from the SMO but acts on information provided by the non real-time RIC. The near real-time RIC houses and runs xApps (extended applications) that perform automated network optimisation tasks such as spectrum management/channel modelling in (as the name suggests) near real time (between 1 millisecond and 10 milliseconds). 

You can find out more about these different types of RIC, the roles they play in Open RAN networks and what the Juniper Networks team had developed in TelecomTV’s free-to-download Open RAN: Advances in the RAN Intelligent Controller report that was first published late last year. 

In that report, Juniper noted its RIC technology can be integrated with the radio access network (RAN) technology of any mobile infrastructure vendor, can be used to manage traditional RAN networks as well as Open RAN networks, has been trialled by operators such as Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone Group, and has even been “successfully deployed in live networks”.   

News of the licencing deal was first unveiled on LinkedIn by Constantine Polychronopoulos, who was until yesterday group VP of 5G and telco cloud at HPE/Juniper but who is now part of the network management unit at Nokia’s Mobile Networks division.

He stated: “Over the past five years at Juniper Networks, our team built what customers and partners consistently recognized as the best-in-class RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) platform, along with an innovative SMO solution for on-demand, end-to-end dynamic network slicing. Our work was honored by multiple industry forums, including a MWC GLOMO Award, and I’m immensely proud of what we achieved together.”

Open RAN consolidation

Nokia’s move further consolidates the Open RAN technology sector, which is becoming increasingly centred around the portfolios of Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung Networks. That makes a certain amount of sense, as most mobile network operators are opting for what are effectively single vendor deals when they commit to Open RAN deployments, with AT&T’s engagement with Ericsson and Telus’s deal with Samsung prime examples of deployments where the RAN, SMO and most radio unit technology comes from the prime vendor partner. (Telus recently confirmed its deployment of Samsung’s RIC as part of its ongoing Open RAN rollout.)

It also further reduces the number of alternative RIC/SMO options available to mobile operators if they decide against the ‘single source’ route: In addition to HPE/Juniper’s exit from the SMO scene, VMware is also no longer an option after its owner, Broadcom, killed off that part of VMware’s portfolio.  

There are still other competitive RIC options, though. Qualcomm has developed a RIC that has been deployed by Verizon – providing an example of a multi-vendor Open RAN deployment, as Verizon’s main Open RAN vendor is Samsung –  while our RIC report provided details of the RIC platforms on offer from Fujitsu (now 1Finity), Mavenir, NEC, Orex SAI (a joint venture between NTT Docomo and NEC), IS-Wireless and Parallel Wireless.  

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV