As more of the GSMA’s powerful MNO members get behind open RAN architectures, their trade body will find itself working far more closely with organizations like the O-RAN Alliance.
The two groups have announced a cooperation seeking to “harmonize the open networking ecosystem and agree on an industry roadmap for network solutions”. There are no firm details yet about how the cooperation will work, but the GSMA said it would
“make access networks as open and flexible as possible for new market entrants”.
The support of the GSMA is important for any group hoping to attract large mobile operators to deploy their technologies at scale. It has come well beyond its roots in roaming, and is responsible for its own specifications, including open APIs; for synthesizing operator requirements and feeding to them to standards bodies and open source initiatives; and for a significant amount of lobbying on behalf of MNOs (not to mention staging Mobile World Congress).
Its wide membership and large resources mean it can be a powerful ally. It has already formed a partnership with the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), which largely complements O-RAN with working groups focused on implementation roadmaps more than foundational standards. In February, the two groups signed a collaboration agreement which will see the larger forum sharing service provider requirements with TIP project groups.
At the same time, TIP and O-RAN Alliance agreed to work together to develop interoperable open RAN solutions.
Now the GSMA may provide a valuable bridge between the O-RAN specification process and the more established work of 3GPP and ETSI. Whatever the criticisms that many have of the cumbersome processes of such bodies, very few operators will deploy fundamental technology that threatens to fragment the market or diverge from 3GPP underpinnings.
In particular, the GSMA is interested in the potential of open architectures to unlock 5G’s role in a wide range of enterprise services. These may have different technical requirements from those of the macro networks, and so may need more specialized vendors; or they may be supported by a new breed of service providers with a very different cost base.
“When 5G reaches its potential, it will become the first generation of mobile networks to have a bigger impact on enterprises than consumers,” said the GSMA’s CTO, Alex Sinclair, in a statement. “In the enterprise sector alone, we forecast $700bn worth of economic value to be created by the 5G opportunity.”
Andre Fuetsch, chairman of the O-RAN Alliance and CTO of AT&T, added: “As the demand for data and vastly expanded mobile communications grow in the 5G era, a global, cross-border approach is needed to rethink the RAN.” He went on: “The GSMA collaboration with the O-RAN Alliance is exactly the sort of global effort that’s needed for everyone, operators and vendors alike, to succeed in this new generation.”