To deploy an open RAN at scale in an MNO’s primary network is a difficult and high-risk migration at this early stage in the life of O-RAN, as outlined above. But in a greenfield network, it can be a way for an operator to adopt a radical new approach to service delivery and cost, from day one. This will apply to secondary networks implemented by MNOs, for instance for cities or enterprises; to new types of deployers such as neutral hosts; and to that rare but exciting breed, the brand new licensed MNO.
Rakuten and Reliance Jio have blazed the trail in adopting new architectures from day one, in order to take advantage of their greenfield status to achieve lower costs and more flexible platforms than their competitors. Dish Network has said it will emulate Rakuten’s open, multivendor and cloud-native strategy when it starts building its 5G network across the USA this year. New entrants in Italy and elsewhere will also be assessing the open RAN claimants. And now Germany’s new MNO, 1&1 Drillisch, is joining the O-RAN party.
Ralph Dommermuth, CEO of Drillisch’s parent company United Internet, told a recent summit organized by the German government that he aimed to follow Rakuten’s example and build a fully virtualized, open 5G network. The broadband company acquired 5G spectrum for its subsidiary last year, restoring the number of MNOs in Germany to four – it had fallen to three when E-Plus and O2 merged, but that deal was approved with the condition of providing access on preferential terms to a new MVNO. Drillisch took that deal for 4G, and went on to buy its own 5G spectrum.
Dommermuth also said, in a newspaper interview, that 1&1 Drillisch is in advanced negotiations with three potential vendors, and hinted that these were not the traditional heavyweights. So this could be another victory for one of the partnerships which has featured in several O-RAN trials and commercial wins so far, such as that between Altiostar and Airspan in Rakuten. Other O-RAN focused challengers include Mavenir, Parallel Wireless and JMA.
Another option for Drillisch might be to license elements of the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP), which will package up hardware and software elements from the Japanese network, as well as from other vendors, to provide a pre-integrated and pre-approved O-RAN solution for other operators. This would particularly appeal to smaller MNOs or new entrants which lack the inhouse skills or experience to integrate a complex network themselves. Instead, they could reduce cost and time to market by mixing and matching different elements from the RCP – in time, Rakuten envisages some of these being chosen from an app store-like platform.
Whether or not RCP is sufficiently ready and robust for Drillisch’s timescales, the German operator does look set to be the first European MNO to commit to a commercial macro network based on O-RAN. It plans to invest about €10bn ($1.12bn) in its roll-out.
Other European operators, such as Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, and Vodafone, are very supportive of O-RAN, and have contributed technology, run trials and issued RFPs. But to date, commercial deployments have mainly been for rural or small cell deployments rather than macro networks in developed markets.
Dommermuth also used the summit to repeat his calls for a national roaming agreement that would allow 1&1 Drillisch to use the networks of the other three MNOs to extend its rural coverage. “We are ready to go,” he said. “We are now waiting for national roaming.”