With the successful conclusion of MWC 2021, Altiostar, a leading open virtual radio access network solution vendor, spoke to The Fast Mode in a brief interview on their showcases and experience at the event. Thierry Maupile, Executive Vice President, Strategy and Product Management at Altiostar discusses Altiostar's Open and cloud-deployed RAN demonstrations at MWC 21, and reviews his predictions for the Open RAN industry post-pandemic.
How has the last 18 months panned out, and what are your expectations for MWC 2021?
Thierry Maupile, Altiostar Executive VP, Strategy & Product ManagementIn the last 18 months, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in interest in our Open vRAN software as mobile network operators see the successful deployments by Rakuten and their peer companies. We’ve had expressions of interest from the mobile operators because of the demonstrated performance of Open vRAN and the inherent cost-effectiveness and service deployment agility of the solution. We’ve been able to follow up on this interest with trials and proofs of concept safely, even during the pandemic, as much of the work can be accomplished remotely. In addition, the performance and growth of our installed networks at Rakuten and other operators continues to keep us busy helping these customers to expand their 4G networks and bring new 5G services online. Finally, we’ve been actively advocating for supply chain diversity, and we’ve seen the Open RAN ecosystem grow significantly with radio providers, hardware, virtualization and software companies launching new products. Overall, the last 18 months have been a time of significant growth in the interest and implementation of Open vRAN networks.
What's your showcase theme this year, and what are the key technologies you will be exhibiting/discussing?
At this year’s conference we worked with our partners to demonstrate successful network RAN implementations and technology advancements regarding cloud-deployed RAN, management and automation. The emphasis is on our partnerships and what we bring to the table together. In one collaboration with Intel and VMware, the companies demonstrate how to run Altiostar software on VMware software. Other collaborations included being part of the AWS Virtual Village Demo and being a featured partner with Red Hat and Intel in their press release. Security is a big concern for all operators, and one of the webinars we participated in discusses the built-in security features of Open RAN and how networks can be locked down, but with transparency so that the operator is always in charge of the security functionality. For anyone interested in seeing these demos, we posted a blog on our website that has links and more details. As I said before, the ecosystem is an important aspect of Open RAN and we wanted to use MWC to demonstrate the value of these partnerships. MWC is the place where the industry comes together either online or in person, it’s a great opportunity to do more than talk about our commitment but to demonstrate it.
What's your outlook for telecoms for the rest of 2021?
Where we saw a negative impact from the pandemic on Open RAN was in a delay in the deployment of new networks. Trials and PoCs were ongoing, but deployments were pushed back due to the pandemic. However, these deployments weren’t canceled, but rather delayed. We’re starting to see more plans to deploy full networks at both brownfield and greenfield operators. I think that by the end of the year we will see significant new deployments. Interest is also strong in private 5G especially in manufacturing applications to enable AI-based product quality systems or industrial IoT use cases. You can also expect to see new management and automation capabilities for Open vRAN systems, an expanded use of public cloud services for Open vRAN deployments, and advancements in RAN intelligent controller products. It is shaping up to be a very busy time for mobile operators who are embracing 5G using Open vRAN.
