Network Media Group Panel: Removing the Obstacles of Deploying ORAN

0:00 foreign

0:06 [Music]

0:07 the benefits of clarification of the ran

0:09 are clear the next step is removing the

0:12 obstacles of deploying orange and a

0:14 disaggregated production Network which

0:16 is really critical for 5G growth

0:19 automation Network orchestration 5G

0:21 Network slicing and a myriad of other

0:23 considerations lend themselves to

0:25 simplifying cell site deployments that

0:28 for 4G 5G and future generations of

0:31 mobile technology joining this session

0:33 are Juniper Networks Constantine

0:35 polychronopolis he's group vice

0:37 president of 5G and Telco Cloud next is

0:40 at T's Robert Sony he's VP ran

0:43 technology and lassus meron hadipur he's

0:46 vice president of Business Development

0:48 and Tech alliances that at Rocket to the

0:51 symphony and gentlemen welcome

0:52 good to be here great to be here great

0:55 to be here great to have you uh great to

0:57 be here in Barcelona once again exactly

1:00 a year ago Constantine and I had the

1:02 pleasure of uh talking about Oran open

1:04 ran and all sort of the tangential

1:06 topics now we're here A year later we

1:08 want to see what is developed uh Rob if

1:10 you don't mind I'm going to start with

1:12 you certainly at t uh big proponent of

1:15 Oran and again those tangential uh

1:17 Technologies where do you see Oran right

1:19 now and really the adoption of orn

1:22 so I think that there are a lot of

1:24 successes that we can point to

1:26 um specifically that have come out of

1:27 the work that's been done by the Iran

1:30 Alliance over the last few years we see

1:32 you know major shift in product

1:34 definition and product direction from a

1:37 number of suppliers like Juniper for

1:39 example where they've invested heavily

1:40 in products that frankly wouldn't have

1:42 existed if Oren did not come to fruition

1:45 we now see products that are making open

1:48 front hall available so this for us we

1:51 look at really three or four major

1:52 success points open front hall now has

1:55 allowed us to disaggregate the network

1:56 to separate and choose best to breed on

1:59 radio versus baseband we also see that

2:02 there is now a new industry now being

2:04 created around service management and

2:05 orchestration with a lot of new players

2:08 out of um you know non-traditional

2:10 software backgrounds for Telco now

2:13 entering the business and providing

2:15 software that allows networks to scale

2:17 with great complexity so another success

2:21 point and of course massive Investments

2:23 by silicon providers out there who have

2:26 now developed silicon specifically

2:28 targeted for virtualized Rand Oran kind

2:31 of deployments so there's really a lot

2:34 of things that we can point to a success

2:35 and

2:36 um but you know and opportunities for us

2:38 as operators to now look at how we

2:40 deploy networks and what we can do with

2:42 them remember on last year or this time

2:45 last year you and I talked about o ran

2:47 and maybe what we would be talking about

2:48 a year later and here we are what are

2:50 some solutions over the past year that

2:52 you've come across for scaling Oran and

2:54 The Wider adoption of Oren

2:57 that's a great question I

2:58 a year ago people

3:00 were how real Oran is what is the actual

3:02 benefit of it why even do it what are

3:05 the cost saving coming from

3:07 but I think this is far beyond

3:10 the test

3:11 we have deployed you know 46 000 sites

3:15 acted radiating three over 300K radios

3:19 90 coverage in our my all open standard

3:24 run on clouds and a lot of things that

3:27 enabled that is beside the Run itself is

3:30 orchestration and automation end-to-end

3:32 provisioning from site planning all the

3:35 way to the to the deployment everything

3:38 has to be automated we've been able to

3:40 show that we can reduce the deployment

3:42 time of a run note by 80 percent

3:46 so this is the only way you achieve the

3:48 growth and post deployment the operation

3:51 Savings of 30 plus in terms of being

3:54 able to operate the network proves that

3:56 run an open run is really the way to go

3:59 I don't think there's a question anymore

4:01 of you know how real the run is and how

4:03 it should be deploying it we see a lot

4:05 more momentum Across The Operators

4:08 focusing on open run and in addition to

4:11 agility and TCO savings you're not

4:13 opening up an open platform for

4:15 continuous Improvement

4:17 additional capabilities

4:19 being able to deploy additional services

4:21 at the edge and so

4:23 Constantine again this time last year we

4:25 talked about the Rick in fact it was

4:26 with racketon it was a very interesting

4:28 conversation there were some I wouldn't

4:30 say debate but there was discussion

4:31 around where we would be again A year

4:33 later talking about Rick development so

4:35 where are we on that uh great progress

4:37 over the last year right and as a matter

4:39 of fact we did announce a strategic

4:41 partnership with Rakuten uh with our

4:45 Rick now powering the Sim world

4:48 um orange

4:50 democratizes the radio Access Network

4:53 um it's a paradigm shift in multiple

4:56 Dimensions right

4:58 and and the Rick is what I call the

5:00 operating system of the radio it opens

5:02 up basically the radio to software to

5:04 Innovation to software solutions that

5:07 allow us to address everything from uh

5:10 optimization new business and opening up

5:13 the possibility of offering new business

5:16 use cases or and you know deploying new

5:19 business use cases in a simplified way

5:22 in the radio monetizing the radio for

5:24 the first time uh but most importantly

5:27 deploying applications that address

5:29 everything from user experience to

5:31 Energy Efficiency

5:33 and dco as well total cost of ownership

5:37 right so it's it's really a paradigm

5:40 shift on the software you know being

5:42 able to to Really

5:44 re-architect the radio Access Network to

5:46 be software driven

5:49 um open

5:50 and uh molar dial more dynamically you

5:54 know managed so it's really a new era

5:57 and we feel very excited now the rig is

6:01 absolutely essential to realize some of

6:04 these use cases for example Network

6:06 slicing I feel very strongly about

6:08 Network slicing

6:09 um it's really probably the most

6:11 compelling way to monetize the radio

6:13 Access Network you cannot have Network

6:15 slicing without a rig because the rig is

6:18 what enables us to

6:21 dumana's user experience over the last

6:24 and most important mile which is over

6:26 the air right the rig is also uh what

6:30 gives you uh hooks into the way the

6:32 radio how how the spectrum is managed

6:35 across multiple users multiple use cases

6:38 Etc

6:40 um so an extremely important component

6:42 of the online architecture and we have

6:44 seen here at Mobile World Congress is

6:46 here we have seen tremendous progress on

6:49 adoption uh not necessarily commercial

6:52 yet but it's getting there slowly we

6:55 announced with Vodafone what I believe

6:58 is the industry's first uh announcement

7:01 of a successful field deployment of the

7:04 Rick of the Juniper rig with uh parallel

7:07 wireless radio and a number of

7:09 applications coming from Partners as

7:11 well as our own exops and our apps and

7:14 we concluded that at the end of last

7:16 year and we made an announcement with

7:18 Vodafone so that was a breakthrough

7:21 um next you know step is to see

7:24 commercial

7:25 you know deployment if not you know at

7:29 large at least limited and you know

7:32 leaders here in the space like robsony

7:35 right

7:36 um are Catalyst you know they have to

7:38 really push the envelope along with

7:39 vendors like Juniper to make it happen

7:42 faster

7:43 that's a very good segue into the next

7:44 question Rob uh can we ask you about

7:47 att's plans around Rick developments is

7:49 that a fair question yeah definitely I

7:51 mean I think what we can talk about

7:53 um pretty boldly or pretty broadly is

7:55 that you know at first they're two Ricks

7:57 um for us there is a non-real-time wreck

8:00 which is integrated into what we would

8:01 previously have called the OSS layer

8:04 um of our network but now is linked to

8:06 what we are calling service management

8:07 and orchestration layer of our Network

8:09 so the non-real-time wreck for us is

8:12 sort of table Stakes for

8:14 um what we will put in as a platform

8:17 that will enable third-party Innovation

8:19 as well as at T owned Innovation to run

8:21 applications that can manage the network

8:24 performance and also provide additional

8:26 exposure and visibility into the network

8:28 on a sort of longer time scale there's

8:32 also a lot of interest for us in

8:34 particular and we're doing trials with a

8:36 particular vendor right now a

8:37 large-scale trial on the near real-time

8:40 Rick we've talked somewhat publicly

8:41 about that and for the new real-time

8:43 Rick we're looking very carefully at use

8:45 cases that essentially allow us to more

8:47 intelligently manage traffic as well is

8:50 do Energy savings and provide some

8:52 insight again into the network in a

8:55 different way because with exposure to a

8:58 set of metrics that generally aren't

8:59 visible to us through this sort of

9:01 standard f-caps model where data comes

9:04 every few minutes or every 15 minutes we

9:06 now have visibility down to the

9:09 millisecond level potentially that we're

9:11 debating a lot about the scale point and

9:13 the right skill point for us to be able

9:14 to operate and consume that much data

9:16 but potentially just a significant

9:18 difference in just being able to consume

9:20 data that's available on the seconds

9:21 level as opposed to something that's

9:23 available on the minutes or hours level

9:25 so we see a lot of opportunities I think

9:27 you know around the further optimization

9:30 of network slicing especially Dynamic

9:32 Network slicing as it gets rolled out

9:34 into the network and policy management

9:37 around those slices there's opportunity

9:39 there so I think there's a lot of

9:40 different use cases the advantages is

9:42 that we no longer are limited based on

9:45 what we at T can deliver so we've had

9:48 platforms for years that were sort of

9:51 pre-oran-ish that supported this kind of

9:55 innovation but we largely had to develop

9:58 the applications ourselves and we didn't

10:00 necessarily have a well-published or

10:02 well agreed upon API and SDK that other

10:05 third-party developers could ultimately

10:06 build on so now we're really looking

10:08 forward to in this open world that will

10:10 be able to leverage what we can get from

10:12 the rest of the ecosystem

10:15 remember on anything to add before I

10:17 move on

10:18 you know I think uh

10:21 the whole concept of

10:25 post-deployment management of the

10:27 network and coverage infrastructure from

10:30 break all the way to things like Auto

10:33 healing Auto scaling operational

10:35 management the level of automation you

10:38 can deliver

10:39 is now enabled primary but having an

10:42 agile Cloud infrastructure that could

10:44 give you end-to-end monitoring of from

10:48 Hardware all the way up from So It Goes

10:52 you can do a lot of things on Automation

10:54 and optimization that you couldn't do

10:57 post Oran it it makes you far more

11:02 capable of managing how network is the

11:05 services are delivered how what are the

11:08 operations use cases of those Network

11:10 Services how much efficiency you can

11:12 deliver and so on so Rick is basically

11:15 the icing on the cake

11:17 um

11:19 go ahead did you say the Rick is the

11:20 icing of the cake

11:23 I I would call it you know the cake

11:26 between the layers of the cake I mean

11:28 it's

11:29 absolutely fundamental but I agree with

11:32 you

11:33 um you know the Rick

11:35 um you know going back to what uh Rob

11:37 said

11:38 uh we would love to see for example Rob

11:41 uh spoke about

11:44 um the ability to do SUB millisecond

11:47 level

11:48 modulation on the radio Access Network

11:51 right so how about if if we get to a

11:55 point where the operator

11:57 has the ability to manage how the

11:59 scheduler manages the Spectrum right

12:02 which is something that

12:04 um so far vendors have kept very close

12:08 it's a holy grail of you know the major

12:11 maps we're going to democratize that we

12:14 want to bring it up to the application

12:15 or at least have hooks into the

12:17 scheduler to build new intelligence to

12:20 enable and bring to bear AIML that will

12:23 allow us to bring new levels of

12:26 optimization right through closed loop

12:29 uh feedback you know close feedback loop

12:31 optimization so the sky is the limit as

12:35 to you know

12:37 the level of new efficiencies that Allen

12:40 can bring to bear as well as new

12:43 business models I believe eventually

12:45 where operators can start monetizing

12:48 either differentiated users you know

12:51 user experience uh private mobile

12:53 eventually through Cloud you know

12:55 through Network slicing there is

12:59 an awesome of new opportunities that

13:01 that I think in the next 10 years we

13:04 will see becoming reality eventually but

13:07 one step at a time and it's very

13:09 encouraging to see progress significant

13:11 progress in the acceptance of Warren the

13:15 adoption of Warren and finally operators

13:18 trying to dip their you know feet in the

13:21 water with Autumn deployment you know

13:23 starting slowly and hopefully

13:25 accelerating in the next couple of years

13:26 Constantine I want to stay with you and

13:28 then go down a line and maybe get some

13:30 comments

13:31 um as far as simplifying Oran deployment

13:33 and maybe optimizing total cost of

13:35 ownership that type of thing can you

13:37 walk us through maybe an example of that

13:38 so that people that are watching this

13:40 can get a concept of what that

13:41 simplification might look like

13:45 yeah so overall Horan eliminates a lot

13:50 of the Hardware close proprietary

13:52 appliances in the in the run right one

13:57 example concrete example I can refer to

13:59 the Juniper salesite router this is a

14:03 containerized cell site router which

14:05 eliminates an external uh box right from

14:09 the cell you know site uh that is fully

14:14 integrated on the platform that runs the

14:15 DU or the CU or both so it's managed

14:19 from a common management plane purely

14:23 software you know solution you can scale

14:26 it up you can scale it down uh you're

14:29 gonna do that with an external box you

14:30 have to plug in a real router configure

14:33 it with the video the box that runs the

14:35 you Etc so IT addresses a simplification

14:39 of a network architecture total cost of

14:42 ownership easier management right

14:45 um so

14:46 that's a concrete example overall Horan

14:50 you know the the shift towards Cloud

14:52 native

14:54 um Solutions leveraging kubernetes

14:57 the native Auto scaling that comes with

15:00 kubernetes software driven everything

15:03 enables us to to get to the point where

15:06 we can have intent based uh definition

15:08 of use cases and orchestration

15:11 which is really then go I think yeah and

15:15 Iran was the last bashing orange makes

15:19 that now

15:21 fair game for Innovation and software

15:24 driven Solutions Rob anything to add as

15:27 far as simplifying or Rand deployment

15:28 yeah I think you know we have been

15:30 looking very closely at this problem

15:32 um you know att's been building networks

15:34 for 147 years

15:36 um it's something we are very proudful

15:38 and prideful of uh so we understand what

15:41 the costs are associated with building

15:42 networks for a variety of different

15:43 deployments and we started on the

15:46 journey towards disaggregation and

15:47 virtualization on core and transport

15:50 more than 10 years ago our core now is

15:53 fully virtualized in significant

15:54 portions of our transport are now fully

15:56 virtualized so we understand quite well

15:58 we're the pros and cons of moving

16:00 forward with a disaggregated and

16:02 virtualized network will go of course

16:04 the benefit of having open interfaces is

16:06 really what we've understood is the true

16:08 benefit of of where you get ultimately

16:11 the cost benefit so as you open

16:13 interfaces that gives you the

16:14 opportunity to make choices and expand

16:17 your ecosystem and choose a hardware

16:19 provider a cast provider a network

16:21 function provider a network management

16:23 layer an independent fashion but it also

16:25 allows you to scale your network

16:26 management from systems which are

16:29 dependent or bespoke for each individual

16:31 vendor and do a common system that can

16:33 address the entire network all of this

16:35 ultimately drives down the total cost of

16:37 operating the network and for us here

16:39 the key is as we get past the sort of

16:41 sourcing question and Hardware

16:42 optimization question is we are looking

16:44 for how do we deal with the fact that we

16:46 now have a much more complex Network

16:47 than we did in the one on 1g2 g3g 4G era

16:51 5G has brought with it a lot of

16:54 capability but also a lot of complexity

16:56 and where teams are probably smaller the

16:59 operational side than they were in the

17:01 4G era or the 3G era and we continue to

17:03 have pressure to try to figure out how

17:05 to optimize the size of those teams

17:07 relatively amount of work that's present

17:08 for them so that's where we look forward

17:10 to the opportunities that are afforded

17:12 by essentially when you go forward with

17:14 open interfaces and with disaggregated

17:17 networks in terms of Automation and

17:18 orchestration and this is a theme that

17:20 I'm hearing all all the time now at

17:22 Mobile World Congress it's every talk we

17:24 go to Every vendor we meet to makes a

17:27 pitch about what can they do to automate

17:29 rather complex workflows and make them

17:31 simple remove hands from keyboard

17:33 basically yeah

17:35 never anything to add maybe simplifying

17:38 Oran deployment disaggregated production

17:40 networks and maybe even Cloud native

17:42 adoption being a precursor to doing that

17:44 you know I think this if you think about

17:46 what has been happening on the cloud

17:49 delivery and as a service delivery in

17:52 the Enterprise and Cloud side of things

17:53 so there's a lot of lessons learned

17:56 around simplification modernization and

17:58 the agility that enables not only faster

18:01 delivery of service but also how you

18:04 manage them

18:05 we think about what we deployed today in

18:08 the in the genome b side

18:10 in the number of components reduced to

18:12 two for example and they go up the stack

18:15 and everything that's cloudified and

18:17 containerized and modularized and open

18:20 interfaces and the fact that we can do

18:23 zero test provisioning from the point in

18:25 time that something shows up out of our

18:26 Edge and plugged in all the way to the

18:29 point that is running the service

18:30 without touch

18:32 this would not be possible without

18:35 gratification and containerization right

18:38 so the cloud is a major component of how

18:41 you achieve simplification and also

18:43 automation that you build on top of it

18:44 could allow you to

18:47 reduce the deployment time significantly

18:50 yeah we've done 80 reduction in

18:52 deployment and post deployment how you

18:55 do things and manage the network

18:57 coverage

18:58 scaling and hearing automation

19:00 protection all those things

19:04 talk not only requires simplification it

19:07 also operationalize simplification

19:10 obviously something that changes the way

19:12 you operate your network right you

19:14 you should not be deploying anything

19:16 manually everything has to be people

19:18 vision

19:19 automation is a key factor to achieving

19:23 simplification

19:25 uh again I want to go down the line on

19:27 this Constantine I'll start with you as

19:28 far as management and the orchestration

19:30 of the network and the challenges around

19:32 that again sitting here this time next

19:34 year where did what what topic should we

19:37 be talking about and what challenges do

19:38 you foresee over the next 12 months

19:40 so my my end goal is to to help our

19:46 partners and customers

19:48 to be able to stand up a complex use

19:51 case from the orchestration point of

19:53 view as complex as an mvno which is a

19:57 mobile virtual Network operator with all

20:01 the applications and I say stand up

20:04 orchestrate a planet scale mbno in a

20:07 couple of hours right without having and

20:10 I mean planet scale I mean you know

20:12 beyond the US you know go to you know

20:14 another continent expand your brand to

20:17 another continent without having to set

20:20 to ship boxes without having to uh set

20:23 up you know

20:24 micro sales Etc just uh strike a run

20:29 sharing deal commercial deal with a

20:31 local provider and leverage clouds

20:33 leverage you know on-prem uh you know

20:36 assets public clouds Etc and stand up a

20:40 use case so that's extreme automation

20:43 um eventually we'll get there as a

20:46 matter of fact hyperscalers have managed

20:47 to do that to some degree across their

20:50 own regions I think the technology is

20:53 maturing and noran is a catalyst in us

20:57 getting there and including the way we

21:00 manage the radio Access Network

21:04 pretty much in the same way we manage

21:07 Cloud assets to be able to bring extreme

21:12 automation intent-based uh provisioning

21:14 and deployment of resources physical

21:18 virtual and workloads in an intent-based

21:22 way

21:24 across any type of Geography okay at

21:27 scale I think

21:29 we're going to see

21:31 realization of that in the next year or

21:35 two

21:36 Rob do you uh sort of mirror those

21:38 sentiments

21:40 well I'm looking forward to coming here

21:42 again a year from now and you know

21:45 hopefully I'll get used to seeing so

21:47 many people again

21:48 um and I think we're uh going to be it's

21:51 gonna be a very busy year for us at ATT

21:53 um this year with the number of trial

21:55 activities and new programs we're

21:56 launching that are specifically around

21:59 um benefiting from what we're getting

22:01 from the Iran ecosystem whether it is uh

22:04 you know mix and match on radio or it is

22:06 new network management platforms or the

22:08 the ran itself and virtualization of

22:10 Iran as well as the red intelligent

22:12 controller trials that we're running

22:13 it's going to be a very busy year for us

22:15 so we really hopefully a year from now

22:18 we're going to be looking back on you

22:20 know fairly significant set of

22:21 understandings of what we think is

22:23 actually possible and in the art of

22:25 possible for migrating a Brownfield

22:27 Network forward to ohran and what

22:30 challenges come specifically with that

22:32 what I think we'll hear a lot more about

22:35 is now that we have this and it's sort

22:37 of table sake so this is the new

22:39 architecture that we've in invested in

22:41 for the future how to leverage that

22:43 architecture in a different way whether

22:45 it's with monetization or it's finally

22:47 with the expansion the usage of AI and

22:49 ml so I expect to see that you know as

22:52 sort of a big theme next year because

22:54 these platforms will now have reached

22:56 maturity and now be available and people

22:58 will really be looking to try to

22:59 leverage technologies that we're seeing

23:01 in other businesses for other use really

23:04 come directly and directly impact our

23:07 portfolio and our investment on anything

23:10 from Network management to even how we

23:13 Implement and deploy ran

23:15 certainly csps uh have a lot to look

23:19 forward to in this space but also have a

23:21 lot of challenges as well clearly so

23:23 where do you stand on that over the next

23:24 12 months yeah I think I was gonna gonna

23:27 Echo what I just had I think next year

23:29 let me be bought on saying that it will

23:32 be far beyond about far beyond

23:35 connectivity we're going to start

23:37 talking about delivering more than just

23:39 Network

23:40 virtual reality application as a service

23:44 operators would not have the tools to be

23:47 able to do a lot more for their end

23:49 customers Beyond just providing 5G I

23:52 think the infrastructure that's there is

23:54 open can adapt applications can deliver

23:56 applications as a service you can now

23:59 deploy a number of new things match for

24:01 faster in an agile way just like a cloud

24:04 and be an app provider for your

24:07 Enterprise customers or or deliver avvr

24:09 Solutions or digital twin Solutions or

24:12 4-H or smart city solutions all those

24:14 infrastructure built on top of Oran is

24:17 now gives you a a service delivery

24:20 mechanism that is adaptive can onboard

24:23 new Services can be used to monetize

24:26 those new services and now is not just

24:28 most far beyond our full of 10. 20 or

24:32 100

24:33 there's a lot more thing that operators

24:35 are going to be doing now next come next

24:38 as early as next year on delivering new

24:42 and modern services on top of the

24:43 infrastructure that is open and agile

24:47 the ran space open ran it's such an

24:49 exciting sector to talk about and

24:52 certainly to work in you folks work in

24:53 it I just talk about it

24:55 um but it's always nice to uh revisit it

24:57 uh more than once a year but in this in

24:59 this space here uh once a year and it's

25:01 good to hear hear from you guys and see

25:03 where the advancements are uh

25:04 Constantine I wanted to say thank you uh

25:06 to you first for participating thank you

25:09 that works uh on our sessions thank you

25:11 rob Sony the first time we've been doing

25:13 this yeah so we really appreciate your

25:15 time really meron thank you so much

25:16 thank you so much pleasure pleasure

25:18 pleasure thank you

25:21 foreign

25:27 [Music]