As wireless connectivity is dubbed the fourth utility alongside water, electricity and gas, Andrew is leading the transformation of in-building wireless solutions.
In this episode, Upendra Pingle, the company’s General Manager for Indoor Cellular Networks, shares insights on how Open RAN technology is revolutionizing how indoor spaces are connected.
The demand for seamless indoor cellular coverage has evolved beyond traditional public venues to encompass enterprise environments, from hospitals requiring remote surgery capabilities to manufacturing facilities needing IoT connectivity. This shift represents a significant departure from the previous reliance on Wi-Fi solutions.
Andrew's approach to indoor Open RAN deployment offers unique advantages for venue owners and enterprises alike. For venues, the technology enables real estate optimization and reduced power consumption. Enterprise customers, meanwhile, benefit from Wi-Fi-like simplicity in management and deployment by utilizing standard off-the-shelf servers.
Andrew recently achieved a milestone with Verizon's first US multi-OEM Open RAN network deployment in Austin, Texas – here, Samsung’s outdoor radio equipment has been connected with Andrew's Open RAN digital indoor distribution system. This implementation demonstrates the practical benefits of the technology, from operational cost savings to improved space utilization.
Looking ahead, Pingle envisions a convergence of DAS and small cells into a unified cellular architecture. Scalable across various venue sizes and capable of supporting both public and private networks, this would mark a significant evolution from traditional bulky analog systems.
Want to learn more? Tune into the full discussion!
Alejandro Piñero:
All right, welcome everyone to Fierce Network. I'm here with Upendra Pingle, general manager for Indoor Cellular Networks at Andrew. Some of you might remember he joined us before, and we're here to catch up on what's been going since. Upendra, thanks for joining us and welcome once again to Fierce Network.
Upendra Pingle:
Thank you, Alejandro, good to see you. Thanks for having me.
Alejandro Piñero:
Well, let's get right down to it. I really want to pick your brain today on In-Building Wireless, but before we get into what's ahead and what you've been working on, I'm hoping you could give us a bit of an update in terms of the market for this in-building technologies. Where are we in terms of connectivity in large venues and enterprises today?
Upendra Pingle:
What we are seeing is, with the wireless being considered as the fourth utility now behind water, electricity and gas, we are seeing requirements for wireless, for indoor connectivity more and more. When I think about that, I'm seeing that for both venues and buildings, and for both people as well as things. Secondly, when we look at large public venues, I mean when we think about stadiums and airports and train stations, these guys may be requiring the cellular connectivity for fan experience, for large crowd getting there for a game or so on and so forth. From an enterprise perspective, these folks are looking at maybe providing coverage and capacity for a hospital, let's say, for patients and doctors and nurses, or for the doctor to do a remote surgery from somewhere. The use cases for in-building are growing in nature. If I really look back, the focus traditionally for in-building cellular connectivity was more on those large public venues - that was relatively easier to monetize. Everything else, especially for buildings and enterprises, it was kind of left towards Wi-Fi, but now these enterprises have use cases, whether it's public or private networks, they have use cases and they have demand for people and things again for in-building cellular connectivity, so across the board, I think the expectation is now that cellular connectivity becomes ubiquitous and people don't have to think about connecting their phone to a particular system or not, the expectation is that it's seamless. Whether you're inside the building, you walk out and go somewhere, whether you're in a train, you want to be able to stay on the same network and have a very seamless experience and never have to deal with dropped call and less coverage and capacity. That's what the expectation is and that's why we see demand picking up for these things more and more.
Alejandro Piñero:
I wonder if we could go more into that technical perspective. How does Open RAN indoors work and what opportunities does this create for those use cases you're describing?
Upendra Pingle:
Great. I am very glad you asked the question because typically what we see is, when people talk about Open RAN, they're thinking about the outdoor macro network, the high-power outdoor macro network, they're not really thinking about the indoor cellular network. What we've seen and what we've been pushing for is, the requirement for in-window cellular can be very similar to that of outdoor. I want to give a couple of examples. For those operators who are bought in with ORAN, for them deploying ORAN outdoor or indoor is about the same. I mean, you may be using different solutions but at the same technology, same architecture. For those operators who are still kind of on the fence in terms of ORAN, we think that indoor is a fantastic sandbox because you're deploying that in a confined area, whether it's a building or a stadium, it's in a confined area. So you're not really impacting anything outdoor, you are not impacting any wide area network. If you really want to try it out, this is a fantastic sandbox to try it out. But then you start thinking about, okay, we are talking about ORAN as a technology, we've heard about all the innovation that it has, but if you really go on the other side of the table and if you put yourself in the shoes of a venue owner or a building owner and an enterprise owner, they may say, so what? What do I get? What we've been thinking about is, how do we make sure that this technology innovation provides the benefit for the venues and enterprises alike. From a venue point of view, if you're the venue owner, you are trying to maximize the real estate, you are trying to minimize the OpEx in terms of electricity consumption. When you maximize the real estate, if you save some space that you don't have to put all this equipment in, you can use that space to put concession stands and monetize that space. If you think from a massive power consumption that typically happens with these traditional systems, if you can save on that, now you can basically drive for sustainability. Those are the things that a venue will think about. If you put yourself in the shoes of an enterprise, the space and electricity consumption may not be a big deal because you're putting it in a very small building, let's say a hundred thousand square foot building, but then what you want to do is, you've been for decades used to applying Wi-Fi, so you want the simplicity like Wi-Fi, you want an app that does the monitoring and management of the system, you want ease of X, ease of deployment, ease of use, ease of management. So, those are the things that you're used to from an enterprise owner point of view. With ORAN, we are able to virtualize the equipment, we are able to give them the mix and matching, we are able to deploy the equipment on standard off-the-shelf servers, which they're very used to from a Wi-Fi perspective. In a way what I'm saying is, ORAN is able to provide all these benefits for the end user, for the end customer that otherwise it's going to be very challenging. That's what we see technology, not for the sake of technology, but for the sake of what is in it for the end user and the owner.
Alejandro Piñero:
Of course, we should make it clear we're not talking about a theory here, this isn't something in the labs. Just at the end of last year, we covered here in Fierce Network, Verizon's announcement of their first live deployment of Open RAN with DAS. Clearly an exciting milestone for this concept that you're talking about. Can you give us and the viewers a bit more detail on how that process went from concept to deployment?
Upendra Pingle:
Yes, we are very excited about the announcement. Just to give you an idea, what Verizon announced is that they deployed first in the US multi-OEM ORAN network in Austin, Texas. That multi-OEM network is basically, I'm going to use some ORAN terminologies now, it's a Samsung ODU connected with a Andrew ORAN digital indoor DAS. That is what they deployed. That's the announcement. We are not talking about a roadmap, we are not talking about an architecture, we are not talking about some strategy long term and all that, we are talking about an actual deployment. That is what we are doing right now.
We always push for taking ORAN indoors and this is basically the proof that we are basically delivering to what we are saying. Now having said that, we all know that ORAN is a dynamic requirement, it's a dynamic spec, so this is just the beginning. I mean, there is a lot more investment that needs to happen in terms of the hardware, in terms of the software, in terms of the transport, loading all this, virtualizing it on servers. A lot of new investment and development needs to happen, which we are obviously focusing on doing for many years to come. Again, we took the first step and we are going ahead and deploying this indoor network on ORAN as we speak.
Alejandro Piñero:
I know that you like to speak about deployability, sustainability and performance, which you've already hinted at during this conversation here. I just wondered what are some of the benefits you're seeing off the back of this deployment, and any other information that you have around Open RAN and indoors?
Upendra Pingle:
Technology for the sake of technology or the sake of, oh, this is a cool thing that we are doing is one thing, but technology for the sake of actual CapEx saving, OpEx saving, savings in hard dollars, savings in real estate, that is what we are able to accomplish. With all the concerns operators would have in terms of monetization of the investment in the spectrum that they spend money on, we are able to say that, okay, we can provide you some benefits, we can improve space savings, you can improve electricity savings. These are some hard savings that we are able to demonstrate by deploying ORAN in-building. Again, going back to my earlier comment, if you think from a perspective of an operator or an enterprise, if you think from a perspective of a venue owner versus as an enterprise owner, you are going to be looking at, okay, what does it do for me? What benefits do I get out of this technology? That is what we are pushing for. Again, kind of repeating myself here, but from a large public point of view, public venue point of view, space and electricity savings, and from an enterprise point of view, ease of use, innovation, deploying on standard off-the-shelf server, these are the benefit we are able to provide by going indoor for ORAN.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. Well, Upendra, we are coming to the end of our time here, but we've talked a lot about this deployment, the exciting news and also what the impact is. I wanted to perhaps ask a tricky question seeing as we've been talking about in-building and DAS and the impact for a long time. What are you thinking about in terms of the future of DAS, small cells and the convergence of Open RAN? What are you working on and what can you share with us?
Upendra Pingle:
To give our view in terms of the future, let me go back up in past a little bit and then I can see what we think is going to happen in future. Right. Back in the day, few decades back, if you want to cover large public venues, the solution was a big bulky analog DAS, and then if you want to cover the small buildings, then the solution was a single operator or a multi-operator indoor small cell. But then if you look at over the last decade plus, what we have done here is, we have built an architecture that's on the digital platform, you can call it for DAS, for large public venues or for small cell, for enterprises. For both, we have actually built a digital architecture and then the next step we are taking now is taking that digital architecture and putting it on the open architecture.
Right; so we have taken the digital ORAN solution now, and what we are able to do with that is, we can scale up and down. When I say up and down, I'm talking about small, medium, large power requirements that can satisfy small buildings, medium venues, large stadiums, airports, all of it. We are able to scale left and right. What I mean by that is, I can go indoor or outdoor, I can go public networks or private networks. Essentially, this architecture, the systems that we have designed is able to cater to all the requirements of a typical in-building architecture. We have seen this convergence, I mean, we talk about DAS and small cells separately in past, now what we are saying is, it's a cellular architecture. From a customer point of view, you can call it whatever you want, as long as it provides me the right connectivity, coverage and capacity at a competitive price and with some ease of use with an app that I'm able to manage both the systems, that is what I want as a consumer, as an owner of the venue and enterprise.
That is what we are able to provide. I think back to your question earlier about, with the advancements in ORAN, we are able to do mix and match of different OEMs, driving innovation on each of these components, we think that the industry is going to migrate to a very sophisticated architecture that you can cover all your in-building requirements and have a ubiquitous seamless experience for the user. That user, again, can be a person or it can be a thing, it can be a robot, but again, a ubiquitous, seamless experience is what we are providing them.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. Well, Upendra, we will have to have you back here to tell us all about it because it seems like there's plenty of exciting use cases and innovations to come on this space. Upendra Pingle, general manager for Indoor Cellular Networks at Andrew. As always, a pleasure to have you join us, and thanks again for your time.
Upendra Pingle:
Thanks for having me, Alejandro, talk to you again soon.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. To you, our viewer, thanks for joining us here on Fierce Network, we'll be back in your feed soon with more leading voices from our tech industry. Until then, take care, and bye-bye.