Open source software (OSS) serves as the foundation of IT infrastructure worldwide, allowing e-commerce platforms and innovative over the top (OTT) players to bring services to market quickly.
Open source is now finding its place in the telecom world. And once it does, it will completely change the industry. OSS is gradually driving the innovation agenda for communications service providers (CSPs) and by extension, it is now challenging the dominance of proprietary solutions in the telecoms industry.
Tareq Amin, CTO of Rakuten, is a trailblazer of the nascent “OpenRAN” movement and is on the verge of launching a 5G network based solely on cloud and software technologies.
Since joining Rakuten in 2018, Amin has been working on Japan’s first new mobile radio access network (RAN) in a decade, and in April, Rakuten flipped the switch on its new service, which it plans to upgrade to 5G speeds before the end of the year.
Its progress is being tracked by dozens of operators and government officials around the world.
Rakuten’s launch is a key moment in proving whether open source-based network technology can work at scale and comes against a backdrop of global pressure to find alternatives to Huawei’s telecoms technology.
Traditional mobile networks rely on equipment that tightly bundles together proprietary hardware, such as antennas and cabinets, with software provided by the three large vendors – Ericsson, Nokia, and Huawei.
By contrast, Mr. Amin is trying to unbundle this arrangement, using open-source software to operate Rakuten’s new network, which is the first full OpenRAN system in the world. “We are on the verge of the biggest revolution — not evolution — in the telecoms world,” he said.
SDN and NFV
Operators implementing open source solutions today tend to do so in conjunction with the deployment of network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN), which will play an important role for the definition and consolidation of the future 5G architectures.
NFV replaces proprietary physical network appliances with an infrastructure less dependent on the underlying hardware. NFV and software-defined networks (SDNs) enable scalability, flexibility, and innovation better than a hardware design can.
The use of open source software code further complements this network design and it could eventually replace proprietary software running on vendor-specific hardware.
Open source builds upon virtualization to open up the network to third parties, adding vitality to the market and stimulating innovation. This has many potential consequences for the telecom value chain.
Benefits of open source
The leading service providers have four fundamental reasons to invest in open source, including:
Mitigate vendor lock-in:
Major vendors have been the traditional enablers of new services and new network deployments. Moreover, to minimize risks, telco managers tend to prefer to adopt consolidated solutions from a single vendor.
This has led to the “ossification” of much telecoms infrastructure and the inability to deliver differentiated offerings that can’t easily be replicated by competitors.
This also adversely impacts the innovation cycle. Introducing open source solutions could be a means to lessen telcos’ dependence on specific vendors and increase internal innovation capabilities.
Enabling new services:
Service providers feel competitively constrained within the confines of the existing network infrastructure. The new services telcos introduce in their networks are essentially the same across many operators because the developers of these new services and features are a small set of consolidated vendors that offer the same portfolio to all the industry.
An open source platform enables telcos to govern and orchestrate their network resources to create new personalized services for their customers. It allows flexibility to deploy new services to better compete against the OTT players. In essence, employing an open source platform could give a telco a competitive advantage.
Transform cost models from CAPEX to OPEX:
Telcos naturally want to minimize investment in new technologies and reduce infrastructure maintenance costs.
Open source solutions seem to provide a way to do this by reducing license fees paid to solution vendors and cutting the capital and maintenance costs of the telco’s computing infrastructure.
Open source design leads to OPEX based cost model resulting in higher capital efficiency and is better suited for scalability on demand.
Accelerate innovation cycles:
The use of outdated technologies has a huge impact on a telco’s ability to offer new solutions in a timely fashion.
An open source approach offers the possibility to upgrade and improve the existing platform (or to move to totally new technologies) without too many constraints. This ability could be essential to acquiring and maintaining a technological advantage over competitors.
Telecoms are driven by standard bodies that have long cycle times to next-generation technologies. On the other hand, open source is characterized by an agile approach that moves and evolves much faster.
Telcos on board
"Though CSPs are at different timeslots in their digitalization journey, they should collectively propel the open source agenda forward. A close collaboration between standard bodies and open source communities is a step in that direction," says Don Alusha, Senior Analyst at ABI Research.
Rakuten is not alone in pushing for a shake-up of the market. For example, Orange and Bell Canada have created internal open source groups in a bid to become well-versed in interacting with community-developed software.
Arnaud Vamparys, head of radio networks at Orange, said that the French network had not been satisfied with the “monolithic” approach of traditional vendors when working on problems such as providing rural or indoor coverage.
Similarly, Brendan O’Reilly, O2’s chief technology officer, said he had visited Rakuten in Tokyo and that OpenRAN would play a “vital role” in future networks. O2 is now running trials in two locations in the UK.
The O-RAN Alliance was founded by operators who have committed to evolving radio access networks around the world. According to its members, future RANs will be built on a foundation of “virtualized network elements, white-box hardware and standardized interfaces that fully embrace O-RAN’s core principles of intelligence and openness.”
The alliance includes members such as AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Intel, Verizon and SK Telecom, and embraces open interfaces and intelligent technologies for the radio access networks (RAN) needed for next-generation mobile applications like augmented reality, IoT, connected cars, smart homes and more.
5G
Open source is arriving just in time, with the dawn of 5G promising faster speeds and more reliable connections.
The success of 5G rests on software-defined networking (SDN), whose main concept is to decouple the infrastructure of wireless networks from expensive, closed hardware and shift it to an intelligent software layer running on top of commodity hardware.
As a result, 5G and open source have become an attractive combination in the telecoms industry, with major operators worldwide pioneering new technologies and use cases.
Vodafone, Telefonica, Orange, and China Mobile are among the major global operators recognizing that this paradigm is the perfect way to win in the new 5G world.
It is recognized that as 5G begins to roll out across the enterprise, the need for more affordable, capable, and agile networks is imperative. Disruptors like Netflix, Facebook, and WhatsApp almost certainly would not exist in a proprietary-only world.
Open source is proving to be key in both 5G and IoT development, powering the automation of the mission-critical functions required to support the high speeds and low latency of 5G and the huge number of endpoints in IoT.
If OpenRAN becomes popular, mobile networks could pick and choose different software and hardware from a range of vendors rather than being locked into proprietary technology for years.
To that end, telcos should no longer hold reservations in adopting OSS but should consider ways to include it in their network operations and commercial undertakings.
It is becoming abundantly clear that commoditization and democratization of wireless network infrastructure is necessary to stay relevant.
Open source is the answer to future-proofing network infrastructure and is the perfect match for innovations across 5G, IoT and other advanced technologies.
