Indicating that Open RAN is primary to Digital India and Make in India initiatives, K. Rajaraman, IAS, Chairman (DCC) & Secretary (T), Department of Telecom (DoT), Govt. of India said that the government is aiming to deliver new products for the customers, and for that innovation is a must.
The Chairman was speaking at the inaugural session of the 2nd edition of the Open RAN India 2022 Hybrid Conferencein New Delhi where he opined that Open RAN brings in greater flexibility for all spectrums, which enables us to act in a highly competitive market. “Our aim is to achieve that soon,” he said.
He further stated, “Every sector has an opportunity to drive new services, new products, and new experiences with 5G. For all this to happen, innovation on the edge has to be supported. Operators will have to evolve and transform to meet this increasing demand by evolving from closed and proprietary legacy architecture to open radio access networks that offer interoperability and network flexibility at a lower cost”.
During his welcome address, Rajat Mukarji, Director General, Broadband India Forum said, “It’s the time to break down water-tight networks. With the 5G spectrums soon to be auctioned, Open RAN can be very instrumental. We all need to capitalize at this crucial juncture in the history of telecom innovation and move ahead”.
Shyam Mardikar, Group Chief Technology Officer – Mobility, Reliance Jio said, “India is one of the highest data-consuming geographies in the world. Today, the cloud is getting integrated and this very paradigm shift will pave the way for the next innovation of Open RAN primarily, for customers, service providers and networks.”
Saurabh Mittal, Head- Network Infra Products R&D, Bharti Airtel talked about the automation aspect of Open RAN and reiterated that “It’s a long journey where the union of competence, innovation and interoperability will play an important role in making Open RAN highly successful in India.”
“Mavenir is building the future of networks as the industry’s only end-to-end, cloud-native network software provider – a key enabler for the success of 5G in India. We are on the vision of a single, software-based automated network that runs on any cloud and is working together with communication service providers (CSPs) to create the right foundations for innovation and flexibility in radio access networks (RAN). Disaggregation of hardware and software and cloudification in the RAN part of the network with open interfaces would provide a choice to CSPs to deploy best-in-class solutions from different vendors to reduce TCO, protect their investment and enhance the user experience by using machine learning and advanced analytics-based applications for radio network optimization,” said Narendra Rawat, Vice President-Technology, India & South Asia region, Mavenir.
Aayush Bhatnagar, Senior Vice President, Reliance Jio in his remarks said, “The crucial parts of Open RAN are RU, DU and CU functions. They are the carriers for innovation and at the same time they highlight the picture for Open RAN with all its challenges and competencies.”
