House Communications to Hear Calls for ORAN Use of NTIA Wireless Innovation Fund

The $1.5 billion Wireless Innovation Fund, created as part of the 2022 Chips and Science Act, “was a landmark achievement, introducing grant programs to catalyze” ORAN initiatives, says Rinaldo, who will testify in her current role as ORAN Policy Coalition executive director. “However, the allocation and deployment of these funds have not met the pace of innovation -- with only a marginal percentage of the allocated budget being utilized. Of the $1.5 billion dollars allocated, only 6% has been distributed: 4% to businesses and only 0.01% to small businesses.” It’s “essential that these funds are fully deployed within the next two years,” she writes: “Simplifying and expediting the processes for our companies to compete effectively is necessary to shorten” the funding gap against China’s Belt and Road initiative and Digital Silk Road, which have "made networking deployments a priority.”

The ORAN Policy Coalition wants the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) and the Development Finance Corporation (DFC) “to have more flexibility in financing wireless telecommunications projects, especially those promoting strategic security interests” like ORAN, Rinaldo says. “If a trusted supplier is competing for a global project against, or proposing to ‘rip and replace’ a company” on the FCC’s covered entity list, Ex-Im and the DFC “would have the ability to waive certain statutory financial risk restrictions. This narrowly tailored update targets advanced wireless telecommunications infrastructure projects promoting U.S. strategic security interests.”

The proposal “would provide a market-based mechanism to help level the playing field and allow trusted suppliers to compete, win bids and advance U.S. interests,” Rinaldo says. Mavenir Senior Vice President-Business Development John Baker also urges Congress to “find ways to make working capital more accessible and available to small and mid-size U.S. suppliers through programs at” Ex-Im and DFC. He suggests policymakers direct the FCC’s 5G Fund to advance ORAN “and reinvigorate U.S. telecommunications leadership.”

Mavenir recommends Congress build on the Wireless Investment Fund’s potential by specifying that “funding of test centers” be directed at “certification and product validation,” Baker says. “Today’s ecosystem already supports 18-plus testing labs globally with an additional 7 labs in the U.S., which are separate from labs operated by individual vendors. If there is not an increase in the number of vendors or the research and labs are not connected into the product development process, today’s vendors will not be able to financially support this large number of test organizations.” Baker also urged policymakers direct the Wireless Innovation Fund and other federal programs to “help promote price parity for semiconductors” used in ORAN networks and support radio interoperability.

Baker and Jeff Blum, EchoStar executive vice president-external and government affairs, cite the push to give the FCC’s Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program an additional $3.08 billion to close a funding shortfall that could hurt the goal of removing suspect gear from U.S. networks (see 2311070050). The issue came up during House Communications’ hearing last week on telecom network cybersecurity issues (see 2401110075).

“Mavenir is engaged in several projects to ‘rip and replace’ untrusted equipment in our country, including an Open RAN deployment with Triangle Communications, but because current funds only cover 40% of each project, [participants] are at risk of not being fully reimbursed for work already performed in accordance with the law,” Baker says. Dish “urges policymakers to consider the benefits of Open RAN as they further contemplate how to help over two dozen small U.S. wireless carriers remove Huawei and ZTE equipment under the Rip and Replace program,” Blum says. “Having small rural carriers deploy Open RAN would benefit U.S. wireless leadership and American consumers.”

Standards Work

The communications industry is “still in the early stages” of ORAN adoption, a time when “splintering around standards and how best to incorporate those standards into an existing or new system” can occur, Blum says. “Policymakers should be aware that a standards split would harm Open RAN, since it would make integration more challenging across different vendors and carriers, limiting supplier diversity. Open RAN must stay committed to its foundational principle of true interoperability.”

Telecom Infra Project Executive Director Kristian Toivo urges stakeholders “establish a trusted, neutral, non-profit, and global systems-level certification regime. Industry has repeatedly underscored the need for an industry-led systems validation and certification process. In fact, many companies have urged NTIA to use Wireless Innovation Fund grants to establish an independent entity to perform this function, with some citing the Wi-Fi Alliance as a useful model for the systems certification regime.” Baker notes the ORAN Alliance’s work “on open and interoperable specifications that define the minimum product requirements for each element of the radio access network,” but he says “we risk repeating history by having suppliers again lock up networks with proprietary solutions that are only partially based on” those standards.

The ORAN industry “still lacks a deployment-ready ‘finish line’ that establishes operator confidence,” Toivo writes. “System certification is the critical missing link to accelerate Open RAN’s market readiness by providing carriers with Open RAN solutions ready for their own further carrier-specific acceptance testing. There remains a window of opportunity for deployments within the remaining 5G build cycle, including in the growing domain of private networks, but industry and government must act together now.”