With more than 15 years of experience working in the wireless industry, Sanil Ramachandran knows a thing or two about cellular architecture and mobile telecoms technology.
Today, he serves as Director of Technology at Samsung Electronics America. A major focus over the course of 2023 has been making strides in the realm of Open RAN, which is all about creating a more open radio access network architecture.
In this interview with Fierce Wireless’s Kevin Gray, Sanil gives his take on whether 2023 has been a defining year for this hot topic in mobile telecoms.
“Absolutely – at Samsung, we have made significant strides in Open RAN,” he tells us. Sanil touches on the company’s recent Open RAN efforts with operators across the globe, including DISH Wireless, Vodafone, Telefónica and KDDI.
The next few years certainly look exciting, with Open RAN expected to account for 15% of all global RAN spend by 2027. During the conversation, Sanil goes on to explain how Samsung is continuing to shape the future of Open RAN, particularly through its ecosystem of partnerships and contributions to industry bodies such as the O-RAN ALLIANCE.
To hear more from Sanil, tune in to the full video interview.
Kevin Gray:
All right. Hi, my name is Kevin Gray, publisher of Fierce Wireless, and today I'm excited to be joined by Sanil Ramachandran, the director of Technology for the Networks Business at Samsung. Sanil, thanks for joining us today.
Sanil Ramachandran:
Thank you for having me, Kevin.
Kevin Gray:
Great. Okay, so Sanil, today I wanted to talk with you about Open RAN. There were obviously a ton of expectations for Open RAN this year and many expect 2023 to be the defining year for it. Now my question to you is, looking back, do you think that was the case?
Sanil Ramachandran:
Oh, absolutely. Samsung, we have made significant strides in Open RAN this year. We helped Dish Wireless launch the first virtualized Open RAN 5G Broadband Network in the United States, which has since hit a number of milestones including FCC's June 2023 deadline to provide 5G broadband coverage to 70% of US population. We also kicked off a massive Open RAN rollout in United Kingdom where we are replacing Vodafone's legacy technology with Samsung’s Open RAN solutions. We recently announced a collaboration with Telefonica to advance the cloud native and Open RAN in technologies in Germany.
Together we will be developing a test suite of Open RAN test cases for 4G and 5G technologies, first in lab in Munich and we'll go to the field later on. Earlier this year, KDDI announced the commercial deployments of 5G Open RAN sites in Japan for which we are providing the Open RAN compliant 5G systems including the virtualized CU and virtualized DU. So, even though some industry analysts may see that the Open RAN is not growing as fast as the initial projections, the Open RAN is expected to account for more than 15% of global RAN spend by 2027. And we are also continuing to see a lot of interest from operators around the globe. So yes, we are confident and optimistic that the Open RAN growth is going to happen in coming years.
Kevin Gray:
Great. So, you mentioned that 15% stat, which is very impressive, right? But to that point that you were just making there, what still needs to be done in the industry to further Open RAN adoption and to get it there and beyond?
Sanil Ramachandran:
The Open RAN itself is a new architecture. It's different from what operators are usually used to where the RAN solution comes from a single vendor. So, as with any new technology, there is a learning curve and a time that it takes. Especially in the Open RAN, one of the main aspects that has been got a lot of attention is the interoperability and interoperability has to get it right from the beginning to make the deployments go smooth. From that aspect, industry has made good strides by defining interoperability and the conformance test specifications along with the open interface specifications. But it's not perfect, it's not a plug and play as of now, but there is a right focus from the industry for example, O-RAN Alliance has made the open integration and test centers or OTIC as a priority to foster the interoperability and that will help the global ecosystem to develop.
So, I think we are in the right direction from an industry point of view. And what we do is we have created a strong ecosystem of partners where we inter work with multiple partners and pre-integrate the solution. The virtualized RAN, Open RAN solution, we pre-integrate and validate before it goes to our customers. That way we take out maybe 70%, 80% of the system integration effort that is required on the operators for deploying these Open RAN networks. And this also helps the time to market for the Samsung Open RAN systems. So, these are the some of the things that I think the industry has to come together to enhance the Open RAN adoption.
Kevin Gray:
Okay, that's a great point on partnerships and what they can do. Okay, great. So Sanil, the third and last question I have for you today is just beyond expanding your partnerships, right? What are other ways Samsung has played a role in shaping the future of Open RAN?
Sanil Ramachandran:
We have been at the forefront of expanding the collaboration with our industry partners to create a strong open ecosystem. These partnership range from commercial off the shelf servers, the container platforms, the CPU vendors, front haul, mid-haul transport solutions, cloud providers and so on, and others. And we have integrated of our solution with the various of these partners and proven our telco grade performance in commercial networks. So, that's from the product aspect. But also we have been a strong major contributor in O-RAN Alliance in the industry forum where the open specifications are being defined. In fact, we were part of one of the members when the O-RAN Alliance was formed way back in 2018 as a merger of the CRAN Alliance and xRAN Foundation. We were even part of the xRAN Foundation before the O-RAN Alliance was formed where we were actually trying advancing the open frontal initiatives and other open interfaces initiatives. So, we have been contributing and we also have a co-chair position in the working groups in O-RAN Alliance. So, apart from the O-RAN Alliance, we also focus on the open source community under the O-RAN Alliance, for example.
Under the Linux Foundation, we contribute a lot on the open source community for the Open RAN. We were elected as the member of technical oversight committee last year where the committee has the responsibility to monitor the features that go into the open source and being aligned with the O-RAN Alliance. So, from the industry consortium and the standardization point of view, Samsung has been a great contributor, it has been contributing greatly in that area with various industry analysts and operators have recognized Samsung's role in advancing Open RAN. Samsung was named as the leader in the Open RAN by Dell'Oro Group in their research. And we are also being named by multiple other industry analysts being instrumental because of our experience, expertise with the radio technology as well as the experience with the brownfield deployments. So yeah, Samsung is committed to advancing, Open RAN and collaborating with multiple operators around the globe.
Kevin Gray:
Great. That's a great way to wrap it up. I think that's all the time we have for today. Sanil, thank you so much for joining us.
Sanil Ramachandran:
Thank you for having me.