Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:21):
Hello, you are watching our series on the open RAN Vanguard inside the TELUS Open RAN Transformation. I'm Guy Daniels, and this special series of programs will give you an exclusive inside view of the open RAN transformation at telus, sharing the Telco's vision and its journey as it unfolds. Well, we are at the midpoint of our series. We published four interviews with key executives from Telus, Intel and Wind River, and we have another two to come as well as a panel discussion and an exclusive report from Apple Door Research. Full details can be found on our website as one of the industry's first major telcos to deploy Open RAN throughout its network. TELUS provides a valuable viewpoint on open RANs current capabilities and its transformative potential in shaping next generation wireless networks. So now is the perfect time to review what we have learned so far and to set the scene for the next installments and I'm very pleased to say that joining me on this Special Vanguard program today are Randy Cox, who is VP of Product Management at Wind River Prashant Agarwal, who is vRAN Business Development manager with Intel and Robert Curran who is consulting analyst for Appledore Research.

(01:51):
Hello everyone. It's good to see you. Thanks so much for taking part. Now we're going to look at each of the programs we have broadcast so far, starting with the economic case for Open RAN and let's open with the TCO question, total cost of ownership, which is a big talking point around Open RAN. Here's Matt Conrad v RAN business development director at Intel.

Matt Conrod, Intel (02:15):
I think one of the challenges that I'm seeing right now on Global Open RAN RFPs is our ability or the traditional telco procurement team's ability to quantify the benefits of the technology, the ability in a hardware software disaggregated platform. It is easier or should be easier to automate and it's difficult to quantify that benefit in these TCO calculators, but I would say that we've gotten a lot better. The TCO challenge and question will continue to come up and if I had any advice for the telecom community is challenge your team to quantify the benefits, the future benefits of the technology and you'll start seeing these TCOs converge between traditional RAN and open RAN.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (03:02):
One of the most asked about questions from our community whenever we look at Open RAN is what about the TCO? There's huge interest in getting hard facts. Robert, let me come to you first. What's the reality today for Open RAN?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (03:16):
Yeah, thanks Guy. It is a key question that's come up repeatedly over the last few years. I think the first point when we talk about today is, and compared to the last three or four years, there are a lot more facts. It is more evidence and more testimony from operators actually running up and RAN at scale and I think the testimony is pretty favorable. I think there's another point which is that you've got a whole supply chain of vendors working together who are all extremely motivated to drive down TCO. They understand it's such a key priority for telcos and procurement teams and they're all working both in parallel and together to drive down not only direct cost of ownership but also indirect costs through things like new power consumption and utilization so on. And that's a pretty large community of people when you spread it across all the different vendors and they've certainly been making a lot of progress in the last few years.

(04:09):
I think Open RAN is about allowing for faster, easier introduction of innovations for hardware and software to drive down the operating cost. I think when it comes to interoperability testing, again one of the pieces feedback that continually comes back from people actually doing it is that it gets easier with each reported cycle. So some of the integrations is testing between different argues and virtual RAN CDs is a process to go through, but the cost of that is coming down. The time is going down. I think it's also worth remembering that open RAN TCO isn't the single driving factor for pursuing an open RAN strategy. It's a bunch of different reasons why people have selected Open RAN as a strategy. If you base an open round strategy purely on TCO, there's still a reasonable challenge. You'll be disappointed, but you'll be missing out on other benefits around something that Matt mentioned, your automation efficiency and operating things at scale. So I think that the evidence we heard from TELUS is actually pretty strong. There's a strong proof point open RAN doesn't come with a significantly different TCO than a conventional RAN and I think that's something that I think other operators can certainly take on board.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:20):
Great. Thanks very much Robert. It's a good point to make. TCO is one factor. There's many factors behind open RAN purchasing decisions as you say. Randy, let's come across to you next and what are your thoughts on this and the TCO question?

Randy Cox, WInd River (05:36):
Thanks guy. Yeah, similar thoughts to Robert. In my experience in talking with operators that have rolled out V RAN and O RAN in their networks, they're definitely seeing an improved TCO from their experience and so I guess for CSPs that are still making and determining whether they'll go toward O RAN or not, I would encourage them to speak with operators that have already done this and learn from them because there is definitely a savings from their perspective. Of course that comes with a lot of hard work and certainly you have to commit to actually experience that. I think there's some elements of this between partners and customers that are very critical to improving that TCO and making that happen. I think things such as pre-integration before showing up at a customer between partners, I think Wind River provides some pre-staging capabilities that improve the TCO perspective along with automation and automation is going to play a key role across RAN in multiple aspects from ease of use from the ability to choose and your vendors and who you want to put in place or not. And then lastly, ease of operation. So I think all of those contribute to an approved TCO.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (07:04):
Indeed. Thank you very much Randy and Prashant, let's come across to you because as we've heard we are getting feedback now we're getting more data. What are your thoughts on the question around TCO?

Prashant Agarwal, Intel (07:15):
Thanks guy. Let me address it from the hardware perspective, a little bit different angle. I think we are getting there. Our current fourth generation Intel Zion processor is the first VN processor with fully integrated acceleration and the integrated acceleration reduces processing power requirement by appro 20% and our next generation V RAN processor, which Intel Gion six SOC will provide even more TCU benefits. It's a combination of optimized architecture and capacity gain will help network operators and dramatically reduce their server footprint. It'll enable most site configuration that require two or more servers to run on just a single vRAN server. So this consolidation can significantly reduce the TCO compared to previous platforms which often have required multiple server per site. So now you can see that by bringing this new advancement in our processors, we are reducing the TCO significantly.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (08:17):
Good to hear Prashant. Thank you very much and thanks everyone for those comments around that first program we put out in the series. We're going to move on to our second one now which focused on open run deployment in practice and one of the areas we touched on was the lifecycle of open run architecture and how service management and orchestration and the R are all contributing. And here's Sushil Rawat, director of RAN strategy at TELUS

Sushil Rawat, TELUS (08:45):
Automation, SMO and RIC architecture is kind of essential for open RAN. It's not an optional software or optional network that you need with the more disaggregated architecture. You need an automation that is more cohesive and is able to deploy a service without a lot of human intervention. If anybody plan to deploy open, RAN using a cloud platform and contain RISE application manually, that will be a magnitude of work that you have to do over and above what people do with traditional RAN today. So SMO and zero touch provisioning, service orchestration and radio intelligent controller, all these components are necessary part of the ecosystem.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (09:38):
Well as Sushil says there, lifecycles automation, risk, SMO, there's a lot of components necessary for successful open run implementation. I'd like to ask though, can these be potential barriers to the wider scale adoption of open RAN? Because as we heard there, they can involve a lot of work depending on your current architecture. Randy, I'm going to come to you first for your thoughts on the different components here and how difficult it may be for some telcos.

Randy Cox, WInd River (10:10):
Yeah, I think there's certainly a lot of work here. I don't want to give an impression that this is not a lot of work and that it is easy because it is not, it's complicated and does take a lot of work and cooperation and I think this is one of the key elements I'd like to bring to light here is around the partnerships because working with the partners are really the only way this is successful and there needs to be an open and invisible if you will wall up there between partners, being in each other's labs, having regular dialogue, roadmap reviews, sharing challenges or problems between partners is really important in order to ease the deployment aspects of this. I think things like pre-integration as I mentioned is really critical. I know we work very closely on a weekly basis with our partners like Intel like Samsung, Dell, HPE and others in order to ease that deployment aspect of coming together as partners to provide a complete solution for customers such as Telus.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (11:32):
Yeah, thank you Randy. As you say, communication and collaboration always so important. Prashant, let's come across to you. We heard in that clip of the number of components or some of the components, it can be a tricky job for a lot of telcos.

Prashant Agarwal, Intel (11:46):
Yeah, let's be honest that this aggregated multi-vendor nature of open RAN means operators have to invest a little more integration effort than they would with a traditional single weather end solution. But saying that the vendor ecosystem has done a lot of pre-integration work that greatly simplifies and speeds up that deployment process. I mean for example the Intel solution building ecosystem which contains of hundreds of vendors with whom we work to develop fully integrated V solution which could speed up that deployment process significantly. So the goal is to create lots of different recipes that are pre-integrated, tested and optimize to work seamlessly together. This way operators can look at different recipe options and choose the ones they work best for them as animation. Wind River is one of our premier V RAN solution partners and we have been working very closely for years in developing these sort of preintegrated solution and many of which are already in commercial deployment and whenever Intel Zon six processor come to market Intel and Wind River, we will be ready to provide operators with solutions that are preintegrated dash it and ready for deployment.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (13:03):
Thanks very much Prashant and Robert, the very nature of open RAN means is going to be a lot of components and many elements there, a lot of work potentially for telcos. What's your take on this and could they be seen as a barrier to a wider scale adoption?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (13:19):
Yeah, a few points here guy. I think the reality is there's a wider trend at work here in the industry and it's really all about automation. That's not something that's unique to Open RAN. It's something we've been doing even since introduction of 4G and 5G specifications, automation particularly the need for automation that arises from the adoption of virtualized networks. This is something we've been talking about for a decade. The ization of networks and automation is how the industry responds to this challenge of increased complexity and sophistication. If operators want the benefits of more sophisticated and programmable networks, then they have no choice but to adopt new structures and architectures that are necessary to deliver that. I think your question is this a barrier to open-end adoption? I think there is a challenge that there's a perception problem, there's a perception that in complexity is inherently something bad and something that we should be concerned about.

(14:14):
I think as with the other speakers have represented here, actually the industry has been learning a lot very quickly and this complexity is now something that there are clear reference points for from TELUS and others in the industry. We know how to do this, we can always improve on it, but is while there is increased complexity, it is a complexity that we know that we can manage. So I think in a way the question's almost reversed for telcos. How are you going to unlock the real power of 4G and 5G networks without modernizing and embracing new techniques and technologies for automation?

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (14:46):
Thanks very much Robert. It does sound like it's becoming manageable now this complexity which is good news for our next program though, we looked at the progress that has been made by TELUS so far and also the challenges it has encountered and its future path and we spoke with Bernard Bureau who is VP of wireless strategy and services at TELUS and here's what he had to say about the progress of its open run deployment

Bernard Bureau, TELUS (15:15):
In the late summer 2024. So last year we completely pivoted our deployment from traditional run to open run and it means that since then we are deploying the Oprah and architecture for the entirety of our outdoor network deployment. So we're a bit more than half of the way done. So the remaining part of our network will be all run by the end of 2027 and we will revisit also the recent additional run sites that we've implemented so that by the end of 2029, 100% of our network is going to be oan. So to answer the question very specifically, we are of the opinion that the technology is ready for widespread adoption including for brownfield operators and complex networks such as telesis. We're using ORAN with a full set of feature. We have nine bands of LT and three of NR and we have 45 cells per site and it's growing

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (16:09):
Some impressive numbers there and yes, there were some compelling external reasons why Canada has had to embrace open run, but even so progress does appear to have been rapid and as Bernard also said in his interview, deployment was not as difficult as they originally thought, but he does go on later to talk about the challenges that remain such as the maturity of the non realtime R and SMO. I'd like to ask you now, and I'll start with Robert if I may, how encouraged are you all by the progress made by TELUS and what are the telcos can learn from this?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (16:45):
Yeah, look, I don't think there's any question that the progress made by TELUS is extremely encouraging. Not only for people who are already embarking on open RAN but the wider mobile operator community. Each major rollout that we've seen of open RAN in the industry has pushed the envelope first, the boundaries of what is actually achievable and I think TELUS has certainly added to that with some notable results of its own. I think the first thing is the idea as Bernard indicated there O RAN isn't just a option, open RAN isn't just an option within the strategy, it is their strategy now it's their primary technical architecture and rollout strategy for a brownfield operator and that's a very significant shift. I think it's pretty much the first time we've seen that and they're most progressed on that. The second point is something that I open Bernard has been very strong on, which is open RAN doesn't represent a compromise.

(17:34):
You don't have to give something up in order to pursue an open RAN strategy on performance, on security, even on questions of cost and so on. TELUS had been very bullish and also in terms of the ability to deploy open in some really challenging environments, downtown, urban environments, complex cells, complex bands to support. Again, all of those things make this very notable. It should give operators a lot of confidence. I think one key point that I've certainly learned from some of the discussions with TELUS is the importance of the ecosystem. The ecosystem can work. This combination that again in traditional modes, operators have thrown their hands up aghast at this, how do you get 10 companies to work together? The answer is you can do it. And that I think is quite an achievement for both, both for TELUS and for other open RAN operators.

(18:26):
That's really important because ecosystem is such an integral part of what makes open RAN achievable in the long run. So I think are the main things. One last point I'd like to mention is the proof point for telus, you don't have to be the largest operator in order to make open RAN work. There are maybe a hundred operators the size and scale of Telus and I think the proof point from TELUS is very much if TELUS can do it, they don't have the world's biggest r and d department. They're not the world's largest in terms of number of customers so on. But if they can do it then other operators should be able to take hard and progress their own open round strategies. So I think that's all those elements of confidence building are part of what TELUS has been achieved achieving its open round strategy and what droppers can learn from.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (19:12):
Great. All great points there Robert. Thank you very much. And Randy, let's come across to you next. How encouraged are you by what TELUS has achieved so far and what this means for the wider industry?

Randy Cox, WInd River (19:25):
Yeah, I am very encouraged by TELUS and their progress to date in terms of their O RAN deployments. I think number one, I think their commitment and conviction to roll out O RAN is very clear and you heard it in Bernard's voice as Robert also mentioned and I think that's part of this. But the other part of this is as mentioned is the ecosystem and the partners being committed to this as well, willing to really be transparent and work together to make this happen. I think of course there's an initial cost to doing this work together, but as you go forward it becomes easier and easier in those deployments. So I definitely think that we've made a lot of progress over the last number of years in terms of O RAN as an industry, but specifically in Telus they're moving very fast and me as a vendor, we are very happy with the pace that they're working and they're certainly pushing us and we're good with that because that's great for the industry, good for us and certainly good for them. And so I think as we move forward I would encourage, I love the point that Robert made about other carriers the size of TELUS and it should be an encouragement to them the progress that they've made in that it is possible to be able to do this and it's achievable to reach performance and reliability of traditional networks with O RAN.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (21:02):
Absolutely. Randy, thank you very much for those points. And Prashan, let's come across to you. How encouraged are you by what you've seen and heard from TELUS so far?

Prashant Agarwal, Intel (21:14):
We are very pleased to see the progress made by Telus so far in any new major technology there is going to be early adopters, quick followers and less quick followers. That's normal obviously any early adopter of new technology is going to face challenges and the open RAN and virtualization journey is not any different. The early adopters face the biggest challenges but also with the biggest benefits and learnings. To be honest with Telus, the industry has learned a lot thanks to these early adopters. We at Intel have learned a lot too. Our roadmap has gotten better and better. We have been able to double the capacity with a similar power envelope generation of generation. We have increased integration, we have added built in ai, we have done a lot in very few years and we are very excited about the future

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (22:07):
Ache. Thank you very much indeed. Yes, a lot of us are really optimistic about what's coming next. Now for our fourth and most recent program in this series, we looked at innovation within the open RAN ecosystem and we spoke to Prakesh Desai who is senior director of product management at Wind River. And having heard about the progress made by Telus, we asked about the wider adoption of open RAN globally.

Prakash Desai, Wind River (22:34):
I think Open RAN as a technology, it's definitely proven beyond doubt. If I just look at the Wind River customer base globally, many of our tier one CSPs, they're deploying open RAN networks. We have seen good success with Verizon in the us we have seen TELUS in Canada, we have now Boost America, we have Boost in North America, Vodafone in the uk. In fact, Vodafone is now expanding to other regions in Europe. Telefonica has started deploying in Germany. We have multiple trials going on in Asia and Middle East. So if you look a lot of tier one CSPs globally have already embraced open RAN, but the adoption and the scale is not as where we would expect. Right? So Greenfield operators are going open RAN for sure, but Brownfield operators like Telus and Vodafone are setting the stage to accelerate open RAN

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (23:33):
Well. Undoubtedly we are seeing progress maybe not as fast as some of us might once have hoped and also maybe not the same, exactly the same vision of open run that was originally conceived. However it is moving forward and what is our honest assessment of the open run sector today and will it do you think eventually achieve its full potential? I'm going to ask each of you this, but Prashant, let's start with you.

Prashant Agarwal, Intel (24:00):
Definitely, yes. The transformation to virtualize RAN is firmly underway and there is no going back. Look at the very public commitments that operators such as at and t, Verizon, Telus and Vodafone have made to open RAN virtual, RAN the flexibility and scalability benefits as well as the ability to quickly integrate new innovations such as artificial intelligence have been firmly proven in commercial deployments. Of course there will be variability in the timings and scale at which individual operators deploy virtualized RAN. However, it's clear that the market is moving steadily forward toward more and virtualization.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (24:42):
Thank you very much Prashant and Randy, I'm going to ask you the same question. What's your take on the market today and your assessment and do you think Open RAN will achieve its full potential?

Randy Cox, WInd River (24:55):
Thanks Guy. It's a really great question. I think of course I agree with my colleague Prakash in the sense of I believe that O RAN is certainly a viable technology today. I believe it is the future of cellular networks moving forward. When we think of six G, I think that's a foregone conclusion that there will be virtualized networks in an open environment. I think as I look at this and you think about RAN and the promises of O RAN in terms of vendor choice and the flexibility of choosing the best in class, the innovation aspects and the drive for innovation and lastly challenging the legacy costs. I think all three of those pillars of O RAN and the promise of O RAN are coming to fruition. We talked about the cost element. When I think of innovation, I think us working with our partners and bringing things like energy efficiency and power consumption control into the network between partners is an innovative and bringing new feature content like that. And lastly, when I think of vendor choice and the flexibility, we see that in our last win at Boost Mobile and the fact that in a live network that Wind River is replacing the CAS environment there and migrating to a new CAS is an absolute huge achievement and a proof point that O RAN is viable technology and it is here to stay.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (26:39):
Great, thanks very much Randy and Robert, as we just heard open RAN is here for the long run. I know there's a lot of years ahead yet, but when we look at where we are today, what's your assessment and where do you think the market's going?

Robert Curran, Appledore Research (26:53):
Yeah, open has a really pivotal point right now. It's kind of strange, it's gone for position where it was being held at arms length going back maybe five years or so to a position where, I mean everyone seems to agree that Open RAN is the direction to go. They may disagree about how to get there exactly, but there isn't really much disagreement particularly even with the large vendors very keen to position alongside Open RAN. So that's kind of interesting. Obviously I think that we're getting to feel like the end of the first wave of open RAN projects, lots of successes already from those pioneers. I think what we're going to see is that the more strategic benefits of Open RAN will begin to become more apparent. So as we talked about earlier in our conversation, some of the TCO and also some of the innovations that CAN can only come from open RAN.

(27:47):
Those are the things that we will start to see and we'll see them from TELUS and others over the course of the next few years. And I think we'll see a greater divergence between what Open RAN networks are capable of versus traditional RAN. I think one point I want to just reiterate, and we touched on it a few times in today's conversation, there are technology parts of Open RAN, but Open RAN isn't just the technology, it is a way of working right across the RAN life cycles, how you work with multiple partners as far as how they work with each other. And that's a change that's taking longer to affect in the industry even than some of the technological developments. It's absolutely critical within Open RAN for Open RAN to be successful as a movement that operators do diversify their supply chain, that they do look at the widest possible range of partners that they could collaborate with and see how to bring them together and deliver some of the results that people like tellers are seeing. But that will really be the proof of the pudding for Open RAN. But I think say it is taking longer than expected, but I think the direction of travel is clear. It's only a question of timing over the long run.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (28:53):
Great. Thanks Robert. And a lot more still to come. Randy, let's come across to you for an additional comment.

Randy Cox, WInd River (29:00):
Yeah, one thing I was thinking about this session that we haven't necessarily mentioned in detail is the reliability and performance of open RAN networks that are in commercial deployment today. And as we always say, our true competition is the traditional RAN and multiple carriers across the globe that have deployed have claimed that they are at that the same performance as a traditional network or beyond that. And if I think about where Wind River is deployed and one of the most complicated and dense urban environments like Manhattan and we are performing with massive MIMO radios that are 64 by 64 and providing great performance with our RAN partners, I think that is really the proof of when we look at, when we ask the question about honest assessment is it's really the numbers that really matter and us being able to maintain five nines or greater in terms of reliability and matching or exceeding the performance of traditional RAN is really the proof that O RAN is viable and it is certainly a benefit to operators who make that choice.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (30:26):
Great. Thank you very much Randy, and let's hope we can address some of the issues you raised there in the second half of the Vanguard series. We must leave it there for now though. I'd like to thank you all very much indeed for taking part in this review show today. If you enjoyed this program and want to know more, then please watch the full length interviews in our Open RAN Vanguard series. You can find them all on our website and watch out for our next programs coming towards the end of March once we've all digested the latest open RAN news from MWC, these new instalments will include an interview with Nazim Benhadid, who is the chief technology Officer at Telus, where he looks back at one year of open, RAN and reflects on the lessons learned and the future vision. We'll also bring you our final wrap up panel discussion along with an exclusive report from Appledore Research. Plenty still to look forward to. And please do remember to register your interest and sign up at our website. For now though, thank you for watching our open Run Vanguard review show and until next time, goodbye.