Nokia’s O-RAN Alliance caution could be contagious

Nokia temporarily paused activity with the O-RAN Alliance, a group it’s been a part of since its founding, over concerns about Chinese members’ blacklisted status with the U.S. government.

The decision, albeit temporary for now, underscores a difficulty global vendors face in collaborating with peers on important technical innovation without running afoul of restrictions imposed on many Chinese vendors deemed a national security threat by the U.S. government.

Industrywide organizations typically aim to achieve global support, and that wouldn’t be possible without the involvement of Chinese vendors, which carry significant power throughout the industry. Nokia opted to suspend activities with the O-RAN Alliance because some of its members were recently added to the U.S. Entity List, which effectively serves as a formal list of blacklisted companies.

-Nokia pins outcome on alliance response-
“Nokia’s commitment to open radio access networks (RAN) and the O-RAN Alliance, of which we were the first major vendor to join, remains strong. At this stage we are simply pausing technical activity with the alliance as some participants have been added to the U.S. Entity List and it is prudent for us to allow the alliance time to analyze and come to a resolution,” a Nokia spokesperson said in a statement.

Separating Chinese-government owned companies from the O-RAN Alliance is unlikely. The group was formed in 2018 when the C-RAN Alliance, a Chinese group, merged with the xRAN Forum, a group founded by AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, and SK Telecom.

Strand Consult in late 2020 noted that 44 members of the O-RAN Alliance were aligned with the Chinese military or government owned, including multiple companies deemed security risks by multiple U.S. government agencies. “Given that Chinese state-owned companies comprise more than one-fifth of the membership of the O-RAN Alliance, it is essentially impossible to limit Chinese government influence in the organization,” Strand Consult CEO John Strand wrote in a research note.

Nokia appears to have been spooked by a trio of Chinese companies in particular — Kindroid, Phytium, and Inspur — that are restricted by the U.S. government. Some members of the alliance hold out hope that the U.S. government will rectify this problem by formally allowing restricted and non-restricted companies to work together on technology development without violating U.S. law.

-Will US regulators split hairs for Open RAN-
“To address Nokia’s concern, we reasonably expect that the White House will clarify things and issue licenses to allow companies to sit on the same key industry groups as Huawei in the O-RAN Alliance, just like it has done in the past for the operators’ association GSMA, standard-setting bodies like IEEE, ETSI, and ISO and U.N. telecoms group ITU, without being in violation of the entity list rules,” Eugina Jordan, VP of marketing at Parallel Wireless, said in a statement.

However, Strand argues that Nokia and other industry stalwarts should reconsider working with the alliance altogether to reduce risk and improve security.

“If anything, more companies will likely follow in Nokia’s footsteps to pause, if not end, their membership in groups like the O-RAN Alliance. Many assert that a solution to address the influence of the Chinese government in the O-RAN Alliance is necessary,” he wrote.

Ironically, he adds, “the ostensible purpose of open RAN, at least in the U.S., is to limit the presence of vulnerable Chinese government technology in networks.” Indeed multiple U.S. politicians and regulators frequently cite this as a reason for embracing and funding the development of open RAN.

“In fact, O-RAN Alliance members exchange specifications on open RAN every six months; this means that the 44 Chinese member companies, including those on the U.S. Entity List, get fresh open RAN code at least twice a year,” Strand noted.

-O-RAN Alliance confronts diminished role-
Three potential outcomes, according to Strand, pose serious challenges for the O-RAN Alliance and its outsized contribution to open RAN at large. Policymakers can reverse course and formally allow Chinese-government owned companies to develop open RAN alongside unrestricted companies like Nokia, the O-RAN Alliance voluntarily dismisses companies deemed a national security threat, or regulators deem technology developed under the O-RAN Alliance vulnerable and unacceptable in networks, he explained.

“Many have mistakenly assumed that because a technology is branded as ‘open,’ that it is safe and secure. The fact remains that no official security assessments of open RAN have been published to date, and there is no public access to the ‘open’ specifications to conduct an objective security assessment,” Strand wrote.

Other industry groups working on open RAN technical work, including the Open Networking Foundation and the Telecom Infra Project, include members that the U.S. government considers a security threat.

Nokia’s decision to pause activities with the O-RAN Alliance presents other challenges specific to the Finnish vendor. Its growing commitment to open RAN technology is a point of pride and it has gone so far as to describe open RAN as “the future way of doing radio business.” Nokia stands out among industry leading RAN vendors as the incumbent most forcefully supportive of the technology.

“In pausing its contribution to the O-RAN Alliance, Nokia just highlighted an obvious issue,” Strand concluded. “Many policymakers, including some responsible for national security, have been slow to recognize the issue. This delay threatens national security. Other companies are likely to follow Nokia’s lead and not wait for policymakers to act.” SDxCentral