- AT&T marked another milestone in its open RAN journey
- The operator used technology from Ericsson and 1Finity to conduct a call on its commercial network
- So far, nearly 40% of its gear has been swapped from Nokia to Ericsson
AT&T is marking another achievement in its quest to make open RAN a reality.
The latest: AT&T completed an open RAN call using third-party radios from Ericsson and Fujitsu’s 1Finity subsidiary. The call was completed over AT&T’s commercial network in Texas.
The move follows an August announcement where AT&T used radios from these two vendors to conduct the first open RAN call using third-party radios at AT&T Labs. AT&T’s goal is to have 70% of its wireless traffic on open hardware by the end of 2026.
“This multivendor solution demonstrates the interoperability and flexibility open RAN brings to our network, underscoring the critical role of collaboration in developing open and programmable networks that can transform the industry,” said AT&T VP RAN Technology Rob Soni and VP Construction and Engineering Alisha Remek in a blog post today.
It's notable that AT&T is using the term “multivendor” in describing this endeavor. AT&T executives have told us more than once that they are pursuing a multi-vendor strategy when it comes to open RAN and since it typically behooves them to have more vendors vying for a piece of their radio business than fewer, maybe we’ll have to take their word for it.
The O-RAN Alliance was formed in 2018 with the merger of the C-RAN Alliance and the xRAN Forum as part of an operator-led effort to reshape the RAN industry into one based on more open, virtualized parts. The idea was for operators to mix and match hardware and software from different vendors to create more competition, lower prices and greater flexibility.
Some thought that would lead to more smaller vendors in the RAN industry, but that’s been a tough nut to crack as some smaller vendors found it difficult to compete and changed their focus away from making radios.
AT&T’s open RAN journey
AT&T’s decision in 2023 to award a $14 billion open RAN contract to Ericsson led many to believe the open RAN movement wasn’t going in the direction they thought it should – certainly not in a “multi-vendor” kind of way. But some analysts believe the industry broadly is moving to open RAN, however you want to define it.
In an OpEd on Fierce this week, Mobile Experts principal analyst Joe Madden pointed to Vodafone’s vendor selection for its Spring 6 project and flagged Ericsson’s plans to deploy its non-realtime RAN intelligent controller (RIC) and rAPPs first in Germany.
“This announcement is significant, because (reading between the lines) it means that Ericsson is providing the RIC and service management and orchestration (SMO) software for non-Ericsson RAN equipment,” Madden wrote. “And there it is….open RAN is accomplishing exactly what the operators asked for.”
In AT&T’s blog today, Ericsson VP and Chief Technology Office Paul Challoner provided a quote calling it a “significant milestone” for open RAN, with the 1Finity radios integrated into Ericsson’s open RAN Intelligent Automation Platform, enabling the aforementioned multi-vendor radio support.
Meanwhile, AT&T is making progress in its endeavor to rip out Nokia infrastructure and replace it with Ericsson in the markets where Ericsson isn’t already the infrastructure supplier. Nearly 40% of the operator’s overall swap program from Nokia radios to Ericsson is complete, according to the blog.
They’re also adding mid-band spectrum to more than 15,000 sites, which means higher speeds and better overall experience for customers. Earlier this week, AT&T CEO John Stankey talked about how a temporary license is enabling AT&T to start deploying the 3.45 GHz spectrum it’s buying from EchoStar.