Government Can't 'Sit on the Sidelines,' Must Promote Open Networks: Officials
Development of open radio access networks, and the security and reliance of 5G, require cooperation between government and industry, said Brendan Dowling, an Australian communications official, during an Open RAN Policy Coalition virtual conference Monday. The session is part of the ongoing Quadrilateral Security Dialogue among the governments of Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. Leaders of the quad countries will meet May 24 in Tokyo for a summit, where infrastructure is expected to be a main topic, speakers said.
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5G is “foundational technology for everything that we do in our lives,” said Dowling, first assistant secretary, Digital and Technology Policy Division of Australia’s Department of Home Affairs. “Building a secure market for this technology is of the utmost importance,” he said. “We are very enthusiastic and keen to hear about what industry needs from government to spur this market,” he said.
“We cannot underscore enough the importance of the work we will do together,” Dowling said. “If we don’t get the security, if we don’t get the resilience, if we don’t get the transparency right, it flows through to everything that we do,” he said.
The U.S. is committed to "international partnership, to public-private dialogue and to actively supporting industry efforts on open RAN,” said April McClain-Delaney, deputy NTIA administrator. “What stands out to me in the past year is the launch of the ground-breaking Prague proposals on telecommunications supplier diversity,” she said.
The latest Prague 5G Security Conference last year emphasized the importance of the supply chain, McClain-Delaney said. “Supplier diversity is really key to us at the Department of Commerce,” she said. The Prague principles make clear ORAN should be “industry led,” but “governments can’t sit on the sidelines,” she said: “There are still barriers to wider adoption.” The administration still hopes Congress will appropriate $1.5 billion proposed for accelerating the launch of ORAN in the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund (see 2104060060), she said.
The quad governments are having “productive discussions” on ORAN, said Yasuo Tawara, director-general, Global Strategy Bureau in Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. “It is important to secure supply chain … equipment, including base stations, as well as ensure security, transparency and openness,” Tawara said. Japan established tax incentives for 5G investments in 2020, is requiring open networks and will promote ORAN at various international conferences, he said. “Transformation of the 5G equipment markets across the world requires international cooperation among public and private players,” Tawara said: “We would like to strengthen and deepen cooperation with like-minded countries and strongly promote open RAN, to which Japanese countries can contribute.”
Industry needs to make a major push on ORAN standards, said Narendra Nath, joint secretary of India’s National Security Council Secretariat. “We will work with industry to come up with the requirements regarding that,” he said. “Zero trust should be built into the different components of ORAN infrastructure,” he said. ORAN must be interoperable and requires that network components don’t all come from a single vendor, he said.
Making the 5G future, and the merger of the real and virtual worlds, reality will require open standards, said Takayuki Morita, CEO of Japan’s NEC. Also critical are “the development of new, innovative ecosystems that are enabled by system integrators and secure and trusted networks,” he said. “ORAN is critical to our industry because open standards bring real innovation,” he said.
More than 60 operators in 34 countries are already deploying ORAN commercially or in trials, and NEC is involved in many of the projects, Morita said, mentioning trials by Dish Network, AT&T and Verizon in the U.S. “We believe that collaboration and partnerships are a critical part of building” open networks, he said. “No company can do everything alone,” he said: “We have seen in the past year that governments have a critical role to play.” Morita cited government funding for ORAN in Germany, the U.K. and Japan.
Vodafone launched its first open network in the U.K. with more than 2,000 sites, which is “already live and taking commercial traffic,” said Santiago Tenorio, director-network architecture. Vodafone has also made clear that 30% of its footprint in Europe will be ORAN before the end of the decade, he said. The company is also working with other major providers on a specification for ORAN, he said.
“We’re seeing that the ORAN journey, which we embarked on two years ago, is starting to get traction,” said P. Balaji, chief regulatory and corporate affairs officer at mobile provider Vodafone Idea. “We’ve had a few trials already in a few locations -- we’re already carrying some commercial traffic,” he said: “On the software side there’s a hardening, which is taking place, so that more load can be taken, which is a positive step,” he said.