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Ericsson and other major vendors are getting into open RAN
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The Parallel Wireless experience may offer some examples
- Mavenir responds to concerns
Entry into the open radio access network (open RAN) market by Ericsson and other major vendors could be a major blow for Mavenir, which has made much of the early running with the specification.
Ericsson announced that it was going to enter into the market in 2024 during Mobile World Congress (MWC) Las Vegas this year. Earl Lum, president of EJL Wireless Research said at the time that Samsung is already in the open RAN game, and he expects Nokia as well as Ericsson to enter into the fray in 2024.
“Why would operators buy from anyone else?” Lum asked.
Talking to Silverlinings at MWC, Patrick Kelly, principal analyst at Appledore Research, agreed. “I don’t see how they’re going to make it in the market,” he said of Mavenir.
Kelly cited the example of Parallel Wireless, a top open RAN vendor, which laid off around 500 employees in a tough market in June 2022. It should noted that Parallel has started to announce more open RAN trials recently.
For its part, Mavenir has an open RAN deal with Deutsche Telekom and a virtual RAN (vRAN) software deal with Dish.
Mavenir claps back
Mavenir told Silverlinings that it welcomes Ericsson's decision to join the Open RAN community. "We are awaiting the opportunity to inter-operate on both radio and baseband as that will be a true demonstration of their announcement and commitment," Jon Baker, SVP of business development at Mavenir, told us in an email.
"Non-standalone (NSA) architecture in 5G forced operators to buy 5G from the same vendor as 4G. We need to make sure future architecture does not have those restrictions," he noted.
Mavenir noted that "all trusted vendors" have signaled their participation in open RAN.
"Adaption of cloud technologies and open interfaces will allow the industry to benefit from advancement in AI, open APIs, etc., to not only reduce operational cost but also partner and innovate to increase revenue," he concluded.
We will just have to wait and see how this all shakes out over time.
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