In this video interview, Sanjay Kodali, head of technology for the Networks Business at Samsung Electronics America, discusses the company's expertise in Open RAN and vRAN as well as the value of this architecture for wireless service providers.
Demand for flexible, adaptable network infrastructure has never been higher. The 5G era has created unprecedented opportunities but has also added complexity that requires innovative solutions for network operators.
Samsung has been at the forefront of developing Open Radio Access Networks (Open RAN) and Virtualized Radio Access Networks (vRAN) for 5G wireless. The only vendor with commercial vRAN and Open RAN deployments in Asia, Europe, and North America markets, Samsung offers a host of customizable, flexible, and scalable network architecture options to wireless network providers.
Alejandro Pinero:
Welcome everyone to another Fierce Wireless digital interview. Your host here, Alejandro Pinero and I'm very excited today. I'm speaking to none other than Sanjay Kodali. He's the head of technology for networks business at Samsung Electronics America. Sanjay, it's great to have you with us today and to tell us a little bit more about Open RAN, vRAN and whatnot. So thanks for joining us.
Sanjay Kodali:
Hey, thank you. It's a pleasure.
Alejandro Pinero:
Great. So before we get into the meat of the subject here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to tell us a little bit about your role and where you sit within Samsung Electronics, just so we have a bit of context of where you're coming from.
Sanjay Kodali:
I am responsible for driving the roadmaps and the products for the US market. So I'm mainly focusing on 5G right at this point. And as you know, we are the leaders on the vRAN and O-RAN space. So my main work is leading the vRAN and Open RAN based 5G products for the US markets.
Alejandro Pinero:
Excellent. So you're really in the thick of really the buzz of the industry I would say at the moment. And let me ask you specifically about Open RAN at the moment. Of course, it's been a big topic for quite a while now. More development, more deployments out there, more commitments. But specifically, I wanted to hear a little bit about how Samsung is involved in the Open RAN development and what you see your role as.
Sanjay Kodali:
Yeah, it's a long history. So we're the only vendor deploying the vRAN and Open RAN systems in Asia, Europe and in United States and North American markets. And it didn't happen just yesterday. It took long time and lots of years of R&D. Our journey started actually before even Open RAN Alliance was formed. It was called xRAN at that point and we were a leading contributor in xRAN form. And once it became Open RAN, we continued our effort and now here, we commercialized many Open RAN and vRAN systems across the globe.
Alejandro Pinero:
Excellent. So you've really been there since the very beginning of this almost revolution in architecture and how we think about mobile and cellular networks. Can you then tell us more about what benefits you see for carriers in embracing Open RAN as their chosen architecture? Why is this such a big deal? Why is everyone talking about it?
Sanjay Kodali:
The telecom industry has been a vendor lock-in industry. A vendor goes into an operator and they will stay forever and ever. And operator has to deal with whatever the shortcomings are with that vendor's roadmaps or products or whatever it is. So Open RAN actually changing the whole paradigm because Open RAN is going to open up the network. So the various network providers, network solution providers can provide same equipment. So the operator has a flexibility to have a radio from one vendor, the use from another vendor and core and many other things like that.
And this one will make operator's life much easy if you have to make any swaps, like if one vendor performance is not good so it's easy to swap in because it's all based on open interfaces instead of proprietary interfaces. And apart from that, it's also gives the supply chain issues, it addresses supply chain issues. So in COVID times, we all have experience with some, so if some of the vendor are not able to produce the radios or any other network equipment as per the demand, operator has other opportunities there. So it gives them a flexibility, it gives them scalability and it gives them a lot more options. And another thing is if it's a couple of vendors versus many vendors, the innovation can go in much faster pace, too.
Alejandro Pinero:
You mentioned quite a lot of those benefits. Something that our industry is perhaps not the best at is being quick to market. We have very long deployments for obvious reasons. It's huge scale, huge costs, you want to make sure everything's in a good spot to deploy. Can you maybe tell our audience here a little bit about how Samsung and even Open RAN can help enable rapid deployments?
Sanjay Kodali:
It's a great question. So the way it is, Samsung has built an ecosystem over the years. So we have our partners in various servers and the platforms and the Chipset vendors and even the other network elements like in RUs and DUs. So we do a lot of integration testing with our partners. So that actually helps us to bring the solution at a much faster pace to the operator. And operator actually, every operator is different so they can pick and choose different configurations. So it's almost like a buffet. So I want this configuration in this way and all. So we have already did the integration testing so we were able to bring whatever the solution desired by an operator, integrated the testing pretty quickly and bring it to the operators quickly. For example, the DISH Project [network deployment], we signed a contract and we deployed the commercial networks in less than 12 months. That's one of the fastest project that we have done.
Alejandro Pinero:
Wow. Yeah, a lot has been said about that DISH deployment and such a great example of what you're talking about here. Now Sanjay, you mentioned at the top that you're also involved with vRAN and maybe this is my non-technical brain token here, but maybe can you explain to me what the difference is between Open RAN and vRAN? Do they co coexist? Can they coexist? Are they interchangeable? How do we look at these technologies and these architectures?
Sanjay Kodali:
It's a question that I often get is that vRAN and Open RAN sometimes used interchangeably, but there are two distinct ones. So the vRAN is virtualize RAN. So that means the RAN software is running on a cart's server, which is a commercial of the shop server. So the vendor like us are not providing a proprietary hardware, rather we are just providing the software and it can run on the server, but the RAN software can work with proprietary interfaces and we can do the vendor lock can even with the vRAN solution, but the Open RAN comes in and opens that up. And so the vRAN software with Open RAN, it can interface with other intricate elements with a standardized interfaces. Thus, the operator can change either their RU or change the RAN and any other component. So that's the difference between, the main difference between the Open RAN and the vRAN and the Open RAN takes another step is the disaggregating the RAN, you can run the hardware from on site and you can get multiple softwares from multiple RAN vendors.
Alejandro Pinero:
Same question I guess as with Open RAN, what are the key benefits when looking at vRAN? Why are operating operators considering this architecture?
Sanjay Kodali:
vRAN is, it's got a lot of benefits. First of all, it's very flexible and you can use off-the-shelf servers. So you can actually use the same hardware for the RAN and core and application servers. So you can scale up, you have the scaling benefits there, so you can use the same hardware for multiple purposes there. And it can also enables the operators to deploy the solution in various architectures like centralized architecture, distributed architecture. So it gives a lot of flexibility to the operator. And because even in the virtualization world, there is two terms you often hear is VNF and ACNF. So we move to the cloud native functions. So with this, there is a lot of automation RAN 10, so you can actually deploy all the network elements in a much more automated fashion. So there's a lot more automation that can be done. So any automation will give a lot of benefits to the customer with respect to the maintenance of it or even on the cost of main cost of the operations.
Alejandro Pinero:
Sanjay, I think that's a very clear explanation. If I got it I'm sure our audience is definitely going to have a much better idea of the difference of Open RAN and vRAN and their key benefits. So thank you for taking the time to join us today and talk us through that. And of course, I'm sure as people listen, they'll have plenty more questions so they'll be sure to reach out. Sanjay Kodali, thank you so much for joining us here at Fierce Wireless. It's been a pleasure to speak with you today.
Sanjay Kodali:
Thank you for having me.
Alejandro Pinero:
Great. And to you, our watchers here at Fierce Wireless, thanks for joining us and we'll be back soon with another digital interview coming your way. Until then, take care. Bye-bye.