Ericsson Open RAN, Apple C1, & Telstra Open Programmable 5G Advanced Moves – EP84

This is Textron tv. Hello and welcome everyone to the 5G Factor. I'm Ron Westfall, research director here at the Futuring Group, and I'm joined here today by my distinguished colleague, Tom Hollingsworth, the networking nerd and event lead at Tech Field Day here also at the Futurum Group.

In fact, I believe we are coming off a successful series of tech field day events and no, you know what? There's more coming ahead and we'll touch on that in a moment, but today we'll be focusing more specifically on 5G mobile ecosystem developments and certainly the key ones that jumped out at us and, you know, merit our analysis. And with that, Tom, welcome back to the 5G Factor.

How have you been bearing up since the last time you were on? Well, I've been busy. We, uh, we had an opportunity to head over to Amsterdam f Cisco, live Europe, and, uh, got to hear about some of the cool advances that they're making.

There's a lot of AI out there, but there's a lot of cool networking as well. And, uh, it's, it's all kind of coming together, right? Like we're seeing the moves that are being made by the companies and how they're kind of combining to change the way that we do stuff.

And so I'm kind of excited for the future. And with Mobile World Congress coming up, who knows? Oh, well, yes, I mean that perfect segue into, you know, the overall conversation.

And before we really jump right in, speaking of, uh, tech Field Day, we have a networking field, day 37 coming up on March 19th and 20th, uh, featuring key players such as, uh, BT and selector ai. Any, uh, additional comments on, you know, say the upcoming networking Field day event? com to learn a little bit more.

Exactly. And that I think, um, is definitely warranted. And well, hey, let's go into the mobile ecosystem.

And I think the first thing that we'll address is open ran. And as we know, open RAN has certainly been a constant theme for the last few years, and its development has, you know, it's been incremental, I think is a, a good way of putting it. And what is going on now though might actually spur a bit more open ran, uh, adoption here.

And to, uh, be specific, uh, we see that Ericsson is demonstrating its commitment to open ran by advancing the O2 interface with Dell and Red Hat. And as background, why is the O2 interface important? Because it's defined, first of all by the O RAN allowance, uh, at Alliance.

And it plays a critical role in enabling the goals of open ran by supporting the, the dynamic and flexible management of cloud infrastructure that in turn supports ran networks in a multiple vendor environment. And so that's really the underline right there, open ran, it's really about enabling interoperability amongst multiple vendor products without really too much trouble. And as we know, you know, it takes effort to get to that level where an operator can simply put these pieces together without having to, you know, think about it too much.

And so what's developing here is that Ericsson, Dell and Red Hat are carrying out proofs of concept to validate the implementation of the O2 interface. And that's showing, you know, really the ability to integrate cloud ran management, which is aligned naturally with the open ran specifications for the O2 interface. So that's really a follow up on the O one interface, really enabling now the inner working of the cloud components with the overall RAN implementation.

And what is going on here is that the collaborations using Dell Telecom infrastructure blocks alongside Dell Telecom Infrastructure Automation Suite and Red Hat OpenShift, which is providing the northbound integration towards the Erickson Intelligent Automation platform or EIAP. And that is its open network management and automation PLA through platform, through the O2 IMS interface and also the O2 interface is providing that standard interface between the RAN management and automation layer and the O cloud infrastructure. So I touched on it already, but this is providing, you know, more detail as to why this is so critical.

And what that does, it separates the infrastructure and the management layers and it has two key functions. First of all, the O2 infrastructure management service or, or IMS, and that's what we mean by IMS in this context enables the hardware and software resource management as well as monitoring at distributed site locations, delivering workflow automation. I keep saying automation, that's gonna be critical if not essential for any open ran implementation because when you put together these different, uh, components you need to have automation built in.

Otherwise, what's the point of adopting? Open ran naturally. And second, the O2 deployment management service or DMS is responsible for the lifecycle management of the open ran network functions.

And so automation and lifecycle management are basically joined at the hip. You basically have to have that in order to have just that a robust automation implementation that's reliable and is not going to, you know, cause you know, the, uh, sweats at night should something go wrong as also as well as applications that are hosted by the O Cloud. And so, uh, to your point, Tom, I'm definitely looking forward to the demonstration of this at Mobile World Congress 25.

And from your perspective, you know, what else is going on? You know, not just with the O2 interface, but you know, with the overall open ran. Cause I like the fact that Ericsson's really like pushing the O2 interface, but not just paying lip service to it, they're implementing it.

And I feel like that maybe is one of the reasons why we never really got good implementation of OpenFlow as a software defined networking system is because companies were interfacing with it, but they were never really adopting it. And, uh, yeah, okay. You could say Brocade probably did with their open daylight controller, but I, I don't feel like, you know, and we all know what happened to them.

They're like four acquisitions down the road right now of their technology. But I feel like with Ericsson kind of driving this and saying, this is how you're gonna have to use it. We're eating our own dog food, drink your own champagne, whatever, you know, uh, idiom you wanna use for that, they're forcing companies to write to that spec.

They're forcing the companies to improve it, right? That's one of those things that you really cannot, you can't lab this up like this has to meet the, the real world impact of it. And I, I love the fact that they're kind of following that same model, right?

They're decoupling the management plane and the data plane. They're making sure that these resources can be moved around and can be utilized in ways that help kind of scale. And, and that's one of the things that Open Ran really needs to kind of hit on is the ease of use, the ease of programming to the standard and the fact that companies can adopt it without having to pay heavy licensing fees or play ball in somebody else's court.

Because what's one of the other things you run into with other competing standards is, oh well, um, if you wanna play with us, you have to write to our standard instead of writing to develop the standard, which is something that companies really love. 1 Q trunking. And basically that was an industry lining up against an incumbent saying, well, we're gonna develop our standard and everybody's gonna utilize it and basically drag the rest of the industry into that.

I think with Ericsson kind of leading the charge here and putting some real money behind the development of resources developers that they can really kind of drive this as kind of the leading standard for people to write to. 'cause when you have Dell and Red Hat riding to it, I mean really all you gotta do is get HPE on board and you've locked up pretty much every vendor out there. Yeah.

And those are I think, very important points, Tom. And I think it's also well tied in terms of the sales, the marketing aspect. Yes, we're heading into Mobile World Congress, uh, 2025, but I think it's, uh, no secret that Ericsson's gotten some grief over how it's been implementing Open Ran.

And I think specifically it's related to the at and t contract they won where they basically became the primary integrator for, you know, the implementation of, uh, at and t's, uh, 5G Network and open ran capabilities moving forward. Although, yes, Fujitsu was included in that implementation on the radio side, but now we're seeing Ericsson really upping the game here. It's like, okay, we're definitely working with, you know, very critical partners in the mobile ecosystem, certainly in 5G, and that includes, uh, naturally Dell, but also uh, red Hat and its OpenShift implementation.

And to your point about real world implementations, it's worth noting that T-Mobile just recently picked Red Hat OpenShift for its cloud automation requirements. So this is show, you know, showing that open ran and uh, key aspects such as cloud automation are definitely gathering momentum and steam. And these can, I think, be difference makers in 25 as open ran, you know, it basically takes on a larger share of the overall ran pie.

And speaking of market shares, I think it's also important to all look at what's going on the device side now that there wasn't a dramatic shift in market share here, but it could be moving the needle further down when it comes specifically to the iPhone. And that's, you know, a, a Apple announcing the iPhone 16 E and that's a new addition to the iPhone 16 lineup that is designed to really offer powerful capabilities at a better price. And the iPhone 16 E is using the A 18 chip alongside the new Apple C one.

And this is gonna garner, I think, a great deal of attention because it's the first cellular modem design by Apple and iPhone 16 E is also built for Apple intelligence. And uh, it's really setting up to provide intuitive personal intelligence that delivers helpful and relevant intelligence while taking a, a, a step forward in privacy for ai. And what's going on, the announcement is that the new Apple C one is basically replacing, you know, the Qualcomm uh, implementation here.

And so, you know, Tom, from your perspective, what do you think is a key takeaway about, you know, apple coming out with the new iPhone team, iPhone 16 E and announcing, you know, the C one? I think I'd be worried if I was Qualcomm, because this is one of those things that Apple is known for just to call Intel and ask them how that worked out for them when suddenly Apple wasn't buying tons of Intel ships. There's a reason why they want to do this.

Well, first of all, we know that they bought this technology, the modem technology actually came from Intel and they've been developing it for quite a while, right? Like I can remember reading the rumor sites and hearing, you know, folks like Mark Germin saying, oh, you know, the iPhone thirteen's gonna be the one that has the Apple modem in it. No, wait, 14, how about no, the 15, well, they finally got it right.

And I think that the value is that if Apple controls the modem technology and they have a development team working on it, then they can do what they've done with the M series chips, which has continued to drive innovation in the chip set that is Apple specific. I mean, look at, say the M four max, or I'm sorry, M1, M four max processor. It is, it's an arm processor, right?

But it has specific layouts for things such as, um, acceleration for video codex. So like when I'm doing video editing, I can toss those, the encoding jobs off there and they run a whole lot faster. Well, you may not think that that's such a big deal unless you're a video editor, right?

But what if I could build those kinds of optimizations into a mobile device? What if I could make the battery life, you know, 25% longer for the same size? What if I can optimize certain other things for, uh, I don't know, uh, apple Intelligence?

Do you see why it's so important that Apple controls the whole chip set? Because they can already do that with the N slash A series, but if they could do that with the modem, they could do even more. They don't have to wait for Qualcomm to continually release updates.

They don't have to, uh, you know, be at the mercy of a company who's supplying these parts. I think this is a huge leap forward. Now for those of you out there who are like, well, why did they do it with the iPhone 16 E?

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Would you rather they have released it with say, the iPhone 17 and if there are any problems to iron out that now you have a, uh, flagship device that has a massive amount of problems, this is how you do product development, this is how you release new features in a video game. This is how you release new hardware features.

You take a small test case with a very specific aim, you implement a new piece of hardware because the rest of the hardware is pretty much the same, right? It's a known quantity. It's, it's basically the guts of an iPhone 16.

But they've taken out some of the, the other little pieces like MagSafe, but now they're trialing this modem. So if it blows up, then they can go back to the drawing board and they can fix it before it actually goes into a mainstream release. That's critical because I think when you give the iPhone 17, you are gonna see Apple modems in the iPhone.

You're gonna see Apple controlling that as we go along. And just, you know, for those of you who don't understand how important that is, we are now two years past the release of the iPhone 15 with A-U-S-B-C uh, charging port in it once the iPhone 16 E was released. Apple has no longer sells a device that has a lightning port on it.

We are, we're, it only took them two years to Rev from, we're trying this new idea to, we're all in on it and everything else is kind of off the market. How long is it gonna take for them to trigger a refresh where they no longer have to support Qualcomm modems? 'cause that's the other thing.

If I no longer have to write a software stack to support somebody else's hardware, I can create tighter integrations. It's one of the reasons why Mac has been such a stable operating system for so long is because they don't have to support every hardware manufacturer under the sun. So I think this is an amazing move for Apple.

The question is, is it gonna spur a company like Samsung to do the same thing or are they gonna continue to buy from Qualcomm? And likewise, how's Qualcomm gonna react to it? And I think those are all outstanding points, Tom.

And I think one thing, uh, that is working to Qualcomm's benefit is that this move has been anticipated by them as well as the overall mobile ecosystem for several years now. Now theoretically had this uh, happen at I'd say two years ago, I would say the impact of Qualcomm would've been a bit more direct and, you know, more concerning. However, I think that Qualcomm has really been doing an effective job of, you know, anticipating this and, you know, preparing, uh, the fact that hey, we are going to continue on with our revenue diversification strategy that's really been already, uh, paying off in terms of, you know, playing in areas such as automotive, such as IOT and so forth.

And so this is something that I don't think is going to, you know, cause much of a drag for Qualcomm. Also, Qualcomm's planning assumption remains that it'll be 20% share with the 2026 launch with the current chip and QCT agreement that ends after that with really no renewal, uh, being assuming to kick in. And also it's a reminder that the chip set and licensing agreements are separate.

And so that means that Qualcomm's technology licensing or QTL has a license agreement with Apple that will continue to run through 2027. So they have I think, a great deal of buffer and runway here to adjust to the fact that Apple has finally replaced, you know, the modem aspect of working with Qualcomm. And when it comes to the iPhone, now let's look at what's going on in terms of the core of the network.

We're going from the device to the core. So we're really doing an e ecosystem stretch here. I think it's interesting to note that Telstra, at least it's promoting itself as becoming the first operator in the Asia Pacific region to benefit from a programmable network with 5G advanced capabilities due to its collaboration with Ericsson.

And what's important here is that under this four year deal, Telstra will upgrade, its ran with Ericsson's next generation open ran hardware and 5G advanced software. We'll also implement AI and automation to optimize network management through self detection and self-healing capabilities. Also, and it invoke this already, Tom, is the fact that it can open that network to more developers across the wider mobile ecosystem through network APIs and who knows where out AG agentic ai.

So, and looking at, you know, what's going on with network APIs, this is good news because you know, with more developers, you know, looking at how can we leverage the Telstra networks, you know, enable more cool applications and capabilities. It's also, I think, important to note that this is showing, you know, there's momentum here that's paralleling what's going on on the open ran side. So what we're gonna do is, you know, find out how 5G advance network capabilities can work in a production network.

And Telstra I think will be a good example of this. And that includes, you know, leveraging a wider array of APIs. And with that, Tom, what do you think is, you know, important here in terms of not just the fact okay that Telstra, Erics have gotten together to put the pedal to, you know, 5G advanced capabilities, but also enabling network programmability and 5G networks?

I think it's super critical because one of the things that we hear a lot about is how programmability is gonna extend our networks, but it's difficult to see it upfront. And one of the ways that I have seen it personally in the wifi world is through radio resource management. You know, being able to look at a, the, the airspace around you and make decisions about where clients need to go and how we need to allocate resources so that it works out a little bit better in general for everyone.

Now, scale that up to a city or you know, a, a a a county, basically that's what Telstra's talking about doing here. And not only that, but if you are someone who is providing a service that runs across that network, being able to tap into it and pull data and statistics is super critical. So think about something like, uh, you know, security camera footage or something like that.

If I have a remote device that is uploading pictures of security camera footage for a given, uh, you know, timeframe, window, what have you, if I know that congestion is low and during a certain time of the day, I can program my system to look for those statistics and upload during that time so that I can ensure, uh, proper transmission or cheaper transmission because it's another thing that people need to understand is that there's still a cost associated with moving this data around. And that's just one of the applications that you can come up off the top of your head. But by programming to that standard, by making sure that people are utilizing Ericsson's, uh, you know, OAN specifications and capabilities, they're ensuring that whatever comes out the other side is compatible with other O ran, but that gives them leverage to ensure that more customers are writing their specifications to OA so that more people are going to demand either use of that technology or would consider picking, uh, Ericsson as a provider in the future, knowing that I get 98% of the things that I need from a functionality perspective with an interface that my developers are already comfortable writing to.

Yeah, and I think it definitely brings out, you know, that it's a worldwide phenom, you know, 5G network, uh, capabilities and you know, uh, the fact that Telstra Erickson are laying claim to be the first in Asia Pacific. Okay, you know, we'll include Oceania as part of Asia Pacific for, you know, the purposes of, uh, understanding what's going on here. But I think it's demonstrating like, yes, openness can make a difference and relation to say, relatively closed networks such as in mainland China where there's a lot of progress and innovation going on.

However, uh, I would say when it comes to these areas, open ran as well as, you know, network programmability, we're seeing, you know, how there can be differences at least when it comes to time to market and delivering capabilities that will ultimately, you know, prove that 5G can actually deliver the things we've been hearing about for a few years now. But now we're actually finally getting networks that are not only our 5G standalone, but are also supporting actual 5G advanced capabilities. And I think that this is good news already heading into Mobile World Congress and I'm sure certainly looking forward to talking about these, uh, you know, programmability capabilities at the event itself, not just with Ericsson, but certainly with all the operators that are there, Deutsche Telecom, et cetera.

So this is going to be, I think, uh, an ongoing ecosystem momentum aspect that we'll be talking about more and, you know, upcoming 5G Factors. And with that, thank you again everybody for joining us and be sure to bookmark the 5G Factor, we're on the future and group website as well as Tech Build Day and what we touched on in terms of upcoming tech meal day events. And again, Tom, thank you for joining and hopefully, you know, there's, uh, you know, a successful Tech Build day event coming up here shortly.

Uh, there always is. com for the schedule, and uh, if you pay attention, you might even see one of the other co-hosts there on a regular basis. Naturally, and I, I know I'll be there.

So with that, uh, thank you again, everyone have a great open ran and 5G Day.