US-led alternatives to Huawei gain momentum

U.S. Attorney General William Barr bluntly dismissed an emerging technology alternative to Huawei as “pie in the sky,” and suggested that the United States consider instead investing in traditional, hardware-based, vertically integrated providers, Nokia and Ericsson. While these European firms, along with Korea’s Samsung, do offer workable systems for the new 5G sphere, they are saddled with higher costs than Huawei, partly due to the heavy subsidization the Chinese government has lavished on its national champion. More importantly, the newer, predominately U.S.-led telecommunications systems are much more flexible, open to many more providers, easily upgraded and less expensive than any of the hardware-based offerings. Despite the economic disruptions in the wake of the pandemic, these emerging system designs are seeing increasing acceptance around the world and are getting a second look by the White House, the policy community in the United States and by telecommunications operators around the world.

The two related technologies are Open RAN (radio access networks) and virtualized networks (VN). They utilize software and cloud computing to replace much of the integrated hardware networks characteristic of Huawei and the three major competitors. They are open in the sense that they employ off-the-shelf components from any provider meeting common standards, in contrast to the proprietary hardware networks which are vertically integrated and rely on a single source for both hardware and software. They are virtualized in the sense that they utilize internet connections and easily changed software as the operating architecture instead of pre-programmed operating systems embedded in hardware from a single source. As such, these newer systems can be upgraded and adapted much more quickly and inexpensively for new applications and shifts in operating strategy. The leader of one of the pioneering Open RAN firms, Mavenir, recently emphasized the benefits of competition: “By giving mobile operators more flexibility in choosing the vendor best suited to their needs, we unleash competition and facilitate more innovation in network performance, faster deployment and network upgrades, and more resilient networks.”

The three most advanced and aggressive system integrators—which design the new architectures using multiple radio, mobile phone, computer, cloud and software vendors—are American based, but work with multiple providers around the world. Japan, Taiwan, Korea and increasingly India all have both component providers and wireless operating firms working with the leading integrators, Altiostar, Mavenir and Parallel wireless. IBM also offers system integration services.

It is also important to note that early roll outs of the new technologies include both dense urban and rural environments, and many are backward integrated so that existing network equipment does not have to be totally removed. Many of the early urban-dominated adapters, such as Rakuten in Japan and Vodafone in the United Kingdom, start with 4G systems, with upgrades to 5G planned in the near future. A Turkish network, with Parallel Wireless as the system integrator, is built on the existing 2G, 3G and 4G systems, disaggregating the hardware and software components. This complex system too can be upgraded to 5G without replacing all the legacy components, adding to the cost advantage. Another feature of the new systems, such as that of the rural U.S. operator Inland Cellular in the Mountain West, is labeled as a “self-organizing network” (SON) which uses computers and software to automatically adapt service according to network demand and fixing bottlenecks, saving the time and cost of human intervention. Forbes