Verizon has hired open RAN maven Tenorio as CTO
He will work on 5G use cases and upgrades
The ex-Vodafone exec was an open RAN booster in his previous roles
Verizon's new CTO appointment has raised some interesting questions about the operator's network plans, not because of the hire itself but because of who the company has chosen. Analysts told Fierce Verizon seems to be eyeing more open RAN deployments. But, they added, that doesn't mean it will necessarily want to work with any old open RAN startup off the street.
The operator this week confirmed the rumored hire of former Vodafone executive Santiago “Yago” Tenorio as its new CTO and SVP of strategy and technology enablement. He replaces Ed Chan as the CTO. Chan joined Crown Castle as EVP and chief information officer in January.
Tenorio will start at Verizon on October 28. He will report to Joe Russo, executive vice president and president, global network and technology.
“This is tipping Verizon’s hand that they are going in an open RAN direction,” suggested Daryl Schoolar, analyst and director at Retcon Analytics on a call with Fierce.
Why? Well, Tenorio previously served for 25 years in technical executive positions at Vodafone. He was seen as an open radio access network (RAN) maven at Vodafone and later held a concurrent position as chairman of the board at the Telecom Infra Project (TIP). He left both the Vodafone and TIP positions before accepting the Verizon position.
EJL Wireless president Earl Lum previously told Fierce that Verizon was working with Ericsson and Samsung on O-RAN, following the $14 billion RAN deal between AT&T and Ericsson that month. Lum told us then that Verizon is doing their own internal version of open RAN by mixing and matching Ericsson and Samsung equipment.
Given that Verizon already had the Samsung and Ericsson open RAN kit in their wheelhouse, Lum wondered on a call with Fierce on Wednesday “what was Verizon lacking that they needed to get Tenorio into their group?"
Both Schoolar and Lum doubted that Verizon wanted to bring many more RAN manufacturers to an open, cloud-native party. Schoolar noted that two or three serious RAN players would give an AT&T or Verizon “more leverage” when negotiating with the likes of Ericsson. But that doesn’t mean that a major operator will want to bring in any old open RAN startup off the street.
At least initially, Lum noted in a message to Fierce, Tenorio is going to be working on 5G use cases with a new strategy and enablement team from the 28th. The analyst said that the exec will be working with Verizon technology partners on new technology advancements such as 5G-Advanced.
So, we will see after the end of the month whether this will mean a major movement from Verizon on open RAN, or not.