• Verizon CTO Yago Tenorio was a co-host for the RAN evolution session at this year’s DSP Leaders World Forum
• He used his opening address to note that the mobile sector is on the cusp of a change that’s equivalent to the ‘smartphone moment’ that transformed the industry almost 20 years ago
• New devices will add to data uplink volumes and enable AI-related opportunities, but the RAN needs to be re-engineered so that telcos can capitalise on those opportunities

Windsor, UK – DSP Leaders World Forum 2025 – “We’re about to have what could be another smartphone moment” that will change the mobile services and networks sector, Yago Tenorio, CTO at Verizon, noted during the Future of RAN session on Wednesday, which he co-hosted with TelecomTV’s Guy Daniels. 

“You remember when we were very busy rolling out 3G and then a smartphone [the iPhone] happened to us and we weren't ready? I think there is another one of these coming. New devices, new form factors” are about to go mainstream, “wearables, glasses, you name it – socially acceptable, thin, light [devices that will] enable new AI use cases,” noted Tenorio during his co-host opening address.

These devices will see what you see, listen to anything you hear and “learn 1,000 faster about your context, your environment, your situation… picture this as a continuous uplink stream of some high-definition video,” he suggested. Some of the workload will be processed on the device itself and these devices might be tethered to other devices that can help with the processing but ultimately there will always be a major flow of data to the network for AI inference to take place. The Verizon CTO believes the best location for that inference workload is “on the other side of the core somewhere – the difference of latency between the radio access network (RAN) and that point is not significant. What's significant here is the opportunity that we have to engineer the future RAN so that we maximise that [data] loop.”

The RAN considerations include the nature of the radio link between the device and the network. The devices are “thin, light, with limited battery,” so operators will need a radio link that “reserves power, makes it easy for the device… and prolongs battery life” while delivering low latency and providing “a number of times more uplink capacity than today. If we do that, this can be one of the biggest opportunities for this industry to find new revenue… we need to think more about how to maximise that outer [data] loop to make all these wearable devices completely frictionless and enable the new AI use cases.” 

Tenorio believes Verizon has a good starting point with its virtualised RAN (vRAN) deployments, which also have open fronthaul radio interfaces that enable the most appropriate radio units to be deployed. Currently that architecture, which comprises off-the-shelf computing/servers, vRAN technology from Samsung and a cloud platform layer from Wind River, is deployed at between 20,000 and 30,000 base stations and Verizon’s ambition is ultimately to have that architecture rolled across its entire mobile footprint because “it’s better” than single RAN options in terms of flexibility, automation and other key criteria. 

Watch out for the on-demand recording of the session to find out more about what Tenorio and his fellow panellists from Vodafone, Virgin Media O2 and Wind River had to say about the future of RAN. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV