Nokia to FCC: ORAN Deployments Not All Equally Open

Nokia representatives said all open radio access network deployments aren’t equally open, in a call with staff from the FCC Office of Economics and Analytics and Wireless Bureau. “Simply declaring a deployment ‘open’ does not make it so, if, for example, it is achieved through a private agreement in which vendors have disclosed their specifications to each other but are not building to the type of open, common specifications envisioned by the O-RAN Alliance work,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 21-63: “Lack of conformity to common specifications would make it very difficult for another supplier to step into such a deployment later, effectively limiting the carrier’s options for partners. That is hardly the end-state ‘mix and match’ environment that would reflect an open ecosystem.” ORAN company Rakuten also spoke with staff from the OEA, Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology. “Rakuten discussed and answered staff questions on how American wireless carriers can deploy an OpenRAN, cloud-native network,” the company said.