Overpromised with 5G? Here's how Open RAN can help

WHEN South Korea became the first country in the world to offer 5G in April 2019, the mobile industry touted this as the beginning of a new industrial revolution. With its high speed and low latency, 5G promised everything from autonomous warehouses to autonomous vehicles. However, reality tells a different story.

Mobile operators in the United States claim that 75 per cent of its population have 5G coverage. The majority are low-band frequencies that are, at best, as fast as its 4G predecessor. The super-fast mmWave 5G is only available in parts of some major cities, and users need to be directly below the base stations to tap on the 5G's full potential.

Meanwhile, even though South Korea maintains the world's highest download speed over 5G, its users are only able to connect to it 28 per cent of the time.

Closer to home, Malaysia and Singapore are more modest with their goals, aiming for 5G coverage of just 10 per cent and 50 per cent by end-2021 and end-2022 respectively.

Progress is being made, though not as fast as the industry hoped for. An Open Radio Access Network (RAN) might just be the catalyst that 5G needs to finally go mainstream.

The benefits of Open RAN

In a traditional RAN, everything, from the antennas and base stations to the software that runs the RAN, is built using the vendor's proprietary equipment and technologies. While this closed infrastructure allows for more control over how different components work together, it does come with major trade-offs.

For example, proprietary hardware and software offer little room for breakthroughs and innovations. For operators that are pushing the 5G agenda, being locked into a single vendor continues to be one of the biggest hurdles.

Calls for an Open RAN - or simply, a RAN that isn't limited to a single vendor - have grown in volume over the years. The enthusiasm makes sense considering the myriad of benefits that it offers.

Open RAN exists fully on cloud. This allows operators to scale their capacity on-demand and take full advantage of cloud economics.

Operators also have a faster time-to-market than with a hardware-based infrastructure, as new features can be deployed quickly and remotely.

It operates on a set of industry-wide standards. This means operators can choose components from different vendors and combine them in different ways that make the most business sense.

Finally, Open RAN allows platforms to support Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning software, which help the network run more efficiently.

These benefits not only translate to reduced overall costs, increased operational efficiencies and faster rate of innovation, there could also be monetisation opportunities further downstream for operators.

Challenges to overcome

As the Open RAN movement gains momentum, the complexities involved increase.

First, interoperability is easier said than done. It takes a lot to ensure that the different hardware, software and interfaces are seamlessly integrated with each other. Second, traditional radio vendors have spent years investing in intellectual properties, fixing software bugs, as well as scaling performance over time. As such, for an Open RAN to succeed, it has to deliver exceedingly high performance.

Finally, Open RAN has to be stable, reliable and secure. This is vital in an open environment, where hardware and software components are constantly being upgraded and updated.

The success of Open RAN, then, hinges on ongoing stringent, proactive testing that addresses performance and security vulnerabilities across the entire infrastructure, all while accounting for security, conformance, as well as interoperability.

There are several testing methodologies available to operators. In automated testing, comprehensive test suites are developed in advance before any component is released. The same approach is then used to validate the deployment of an Open RAN solution to make sure that tests are run automatically every time new components are released. There is also continuous testing, whereby real-world traffic is simulated and applied to the network so issues can be spotted and resolved quickly. There is also field testing, where actual devices are used in the real world to validate end-user experience.

Uneven progress across the region

According to a recent survey conducted by the Dell'Oro group, global Open RAN revenues have increased around five-fold in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period last year. Furthermore, Asia-Pacific is driving the surge, with Japanese operators aggressively pushing for Open RAN migration. In South-east Asia, experts estimate that 5G could add "6 per cent to 9 per cent to consumer revenues and 18 per cent to 22 per cent to enterprise revenues" by 2025. It is encouraging to see that major economies have made significant headways.

Despite the relatively modest goals, the Singapore government recently added S$30 million to an existing S$40 million fund to fuel the development and adoption of 5G products and services. The Malaysian government, too, will invest RM15 billion (S$4.9 billion) over a 10-year period in the nationwide deployment of 5G.

Looking ahead, Open RAN could add at least US$285 billion to gross domestic product globally by 2030, then US$91 billion annually thereafter. For these long-term financial incentives to come to fruition, regulators, operators and service providers must first embrace Open RAN. Comprehensive and continuous testing guided by proven methodologies - from simulated to real-world settings - ensures a successful pathway to real 5G adoption.

Only through sustained, solid testing in the industry can we build confidence, spur innovation and convince stakeholders that Open RAN is, in fact, the way forward to make 5G mainstream in the near future.

The writer is head of South-east Asia at Spirent