Verizon's CTO tells Fierce that AI RAN isn't ready for primetime yet
The CTO confirms that both Ericsson and Samsung are working on open RAN for Verizon
He said that Samsung is more advanced than Ericsson right now
Despite the hype around AI RAN at last week’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) show, Verizon’s chief technology officer thinks that the Nvidia and Nokia-backed push to use graphical processing units (GPUs) – the AI chips used by hyperscalers in data centers – to run 5G radio workloads and more on servers in the field – literally – will not take off, at least not yet.
Verizon CTO and SVP Santiago “Yago” Tenorio told Fierce in an interview at MWC that GPUs don’t offer a performance boost over virtualized RAN (vRAN) and other standard kit in the field today but are expensive to use. “As of today, I don’t think there is a performance gain, however, in cost [it is higher],” the CTO stated.
“If you divide performance by cost ... then one day it makes sense. Today? No, it doesn’t,” Tenorio said. “Just thinking we’re going to deploy GPUs everywhere ... that’s a simplification.”
Verizon is very much switched on to vRAN and – as Fierce has reported before – is using both Samsung and Ericsson to develop vRAN-based open RAN. The operator and Samsung have a long-running relationship on deploying vRAN in the field.
Verizon has said it has deployed over 10,000 5G vRAN sites and plans to deploy 20,000 sites by the end of 2025. In addition, Verizon has deployed 130,000 open RAN radios from Samsung on its network.
Tenorio said that Samsung’s vRAN is deployed across Manhattan and many other cities. He said that Verizon used it to support the Super Bowl in New Orleans this year.
Tenorio acknowledged that Verizon is working with both Ericsson and Samsung on open RAN. “We think think it is the right thing for customers,” he said. The CTO noted, however, that Samsung “is a lot more advanced.”
“We’re driving Ericsson to adopt the same philosophy, unfortunately they’re very late,” he said of Verizon and Ericsson’s open RAN efforts so far.
Fierce will see how this develops over the course of 2025.