NTIA Launches Program for Collaborative Industry Testing of ORAN Gear

Working with carriers and vendors, NTIA awarded $42 million Monday to launch an open radio access network testing center in the Dallas Technology Corridor, with a satellite operation in the Washington, D.C., area. The program allows companies to collaborate on testing ORAN software and hardware. It was funded through the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund, a $1.5 billion federal fund aimed at spurring growth of open networks and advanced spectrum sharing (see 2308080047).

Among the companies participating are AT&T and Verizon, which are leading the project, Japan’s NTT Docomo, India’s Jio, traditional suppliers like Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung, and other vendors including Mavenir, Fujitsu, Dell Technologies, Intel, Radisys, Rakuten, Red Hat, VMWare by Broadcom and Wind River Systems.

“While 5G is a dynamic technology, today’s market for wireless equipment is static, and … highly consolidated,” said NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson, during an event at Virginia Tech's Arlington, Virginia, campus. With so few companies dominating the market, “costs are higher and resilience is lower and American companies are increasingly shut out,” he said: “But change is on the way.”

The grant is the last under the program's first phase, with an initial $142 million in awards (see 2308080047), Davidson said. This spring, NTIA will launch “another, larger round of funding,” he said. NTIA is committed to moving quickly, he added.

AT&T and Verizon cooperating “shows that competition is not at odds with collaboration,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who also spoke at the event. It’s like Coke working with Pepsi, she said. Other countries “want an alternative to Chinese telecommunications equipment” and we need to provide that alternative, she said.

Other nations “worry about the national security threats of an all-Huawei network just as much as we worry,” Raimondo said. ORAN “brings the world closer to the United States,” she said. The U.S. wants to work with its allies, including Japan and India, to make the supply chain safe, she said.

During the initial decades of the wireless industry, “America led in virtually all of wireless development,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a cellular industry veteran. “We’re looking forward to even bigger investments coming down the pike,” he said. AT&T and Verizon joining forces “is like Macy’s and Gimbels actually coming together,” he joked, referring to historic department store rivals.

During the middle of the last decade, U.S. leadership slipped, Warner said. “Huawei and ZTE were suddenly rising up” offering “good equipment at a cheap price point, but with huge national security implications,” he said. China was “flooding the standard-setting bodies all over the world,” Warner said. “We were, frankly, late at sounding the alarm on Huawei and ZTE,” he added. The question other countries have about ORAN is why it hasn’t been deployed in the U.S. “This is a long time coming,” he said.

“I miss the days when we had 50 large defense contractors, not five,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va. Diversity “really strengthens us,” he said. ORAN will make wireless networks more resilient, redundant and “much more safe,” he said. “I prefer to think of Dallas as the satellite testbed for work that’s going on here,” he joked.

AT&T has long been a proponent of ORAN, Igal Elbaz, network chief technology officer, said during the event. AT&T is a founding member of the ORAN Alliance and its mission is transforming the network “from closed, proprietary, hardware-centric, into open, disaggregated and software- and cloud-based,” he said. “By far” the biggest perceived impediment in moving to ORAN has been the need for more testing and integration, he said.

It hasn’t been easy to get 20 companies to work together, but “eventually we have the same challenges,” Elbaz said. It didn’t make sense for every company to open a testing lab, he said. “It made sense for us to collaborate, create one lab for established networks and existing networks where we can test and share results,” he said.

ORAN is a “step in the process of virtualizing networks, first in the core, and then in the RAN, and then moving to a more open, innovative environment,” said Adam Koeppe, Verizon senior vice president-technology, strategy and planning. Verizon has focused on ORAN “from the very beginning” and has already deployed “compatible” equipment across its network, he said.

Working together will “bring structure” to the testing process to prove “interoperability in a high-performing, high-quality network,” Koeppe said. The goal must be giving customers the best experience at all times, he said.

“By investing in open, interoperable networks, NTIA is laying the foundation for a stronger, more secure and more resilient telecommunications supply chain,” NTIA said: “The transition to open networks will enable the U.S. and its global partners to lead the next generation of wireless innovation.

Davidson acknowledged during the State of the Net conference that morning (see 2402120068) that “there are people who are skeptical” about the fund's efficacy, but the new Dallas testing center will counter them by proving ORAN “equipment can interoperate” and promote “more trusted networks” that don’t rely on gear from Huawei and ZTE. The center is “exactly the kind of place where government can help” promote ORAN “by creating these test beds so that people can prove that their equipment works,” he said: “I think more open networks are inevitable in this space.”