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标题: AT&T's CEO explains his open RAN reasoning  [查看完整版帖子] [打印本页]

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时间:  2023-12-6 10:56

作者: carlzhusz     标题: AT&T's CEO explains his open RAN reasoning

原文如下，基本上的道理和美国政府宣扬的Diversity类似，就是要多样化，以前讨论男女关系，现在多了LGBT, 现在讨论移动通信，也不能只有这几家老公司在了。也不能简单的说老公司有经验，成本低。那回到男女关系，卫道士宣传男女关系是某某教义定义，神圣不可侵犯？现在多了彩虹关系，各类产品层出不穷，那些卫道士们还能讲神圣不可侵犯嘛？从现在的情况看，不能了。

AT&T's CEO said the operator's new open RAN agreement with Ericsson allows AT&T to be more efficient, but "I don't think it's going to move the needle from a capital intensity perspective."

John Stankey, speaking at an investor event Tuesday morning, said AT&T's new $14 billion deal with Ericsson "allows us to operate our business more effectively. It's simpler for us. It's one network infrastructure at the core, there's one set of systems that support it, it's all those things that you want to do that allow us to be a more efficient business."

And he said that Ericsson agreed to lower its prices as part of the deal.

"I think what we're going to see is more efficiency on a unit level," he said of the new agreement. "The dynamic is that the units you're deploying right now don't give you quite as much yield and coverage, and so you tend to have to do more units, and so we're fighting this never ending battle of getting more efficient to keep up with traffic. I think that battle will continue."

Stankey's comments appear to indicate that AT&T has been successful in using open RAN to push its existing vendors to lower their prices.

But Stankey explained that AT&T's embrace of open RAN technology isn't going to dramatically affect its overall network spending. "I don't think I'm going to walk out and tell you that O-RAN is the secret sauce to take this down to a single-digit-teens as a percent of revenue capital intensity business," he said. "I don't believe that will be the case. It'll be a tool that we will use to continue to manage this and keep ourselves in this mid-teens level of capital intensity."

"I wouldn't blow this out of context," Stankey added. "This is a component of our [network] investment, it's not all of our investment. It's not all of our RAN investment either, it's a portion of it."

Preparing for the future

Stankey said that AT&T's new agreement with Ericsson – which stretches over the next five years – is part of the operator's future network planning.

"With the slowdown in the vendor markets we were able to step back and say, 'What can we do to get an opportunistic agreement where we can drive vendors into a position to move more aggressively on O-RAN to position us long term?'" Stankey explained. Indeed, Ericsson, Nokia and other vendors this year have reported a bigger-than-expected slowdown in their equipment sales.

"We can take advantage of a little bit of a lull right now," Stankey said.

"We had two really good suppliers, they both did good work for us," Stankey said of Nokia and Ericsson, AT&T's two main 5G equipment suppliers. The question, he said, was "how can we get to the most modernized network that gets the most amount of traffic across intentionally open interfaces. And it was this path that we chose with Ericsson."

As a result of AT&T's shift to Ericsson's open RAN, Stankey said the company hopes to eventually mix and match products from a variety of vendors. Indeed, that's the ultimate promise of O-RAN Alliance specifications.

"It's entirely possible Nokia could be one of those suppliers of that more diverse vendor base," Stankey said. "And that's going to be important as networks become more distributed, and you start dealing with smaller packages that have to get out, because the macro game has largely been played out."

"That's kind of the logic behind it," he said.

What the others are saying

"If I look at look at the performance of the O-RAN at this point, it can't do the kind of things like massive MIMO at 16T/16R [to] 64T/64R, those kind of performance measures, we're just not there yet," said Verizon's networking chief, Joe Russo, at a recent investor event. "And until we are, it doesn't have a place necessarily in the kind of performance that I want to deliver to my customers."

But AT&T officials said that massive MIMO will be possible via the operator's move to open RAN.

"I think generally people have presumed that the de-verticalization of the industry is just a matter of time, and that you want to be able to smartly buy different components up and down the stack, and that's certainly our hope and expectation," said T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert Tuesday at an investor event in response to questions about AT&T's new deal with Ericsson. "We really deeply value our partnerships with both Nokia and Ericsson, and see that as an advantage that we can buy up and down the stack from multiple partners."

Indeed, T-Mobile officials have generally offered more positive comments around open RAN in recent years.

But Sievert indicated T-Mobile doesn't feel the need to quickly deploy its C-band and 3.45GHz spectrum holdings. He said the company can hold that spectrum "until we need it."

"We've got plenty of room to be able to get this [spectrum] deployed before customers need it from a capacity standpoint, and we'll just be really smart about how we do that and where we do that," Sievert said in response to questions about when T-Mobile might deploy its C-band and 3.45GHz spectrum holdings. He said T-Mobile has received the dual-band radios – ones that can handle both bands – that it has been waiting for since buying that spectrum.

The Dish angle

Dish Network has been a loud and vocal open RAN proponent since embarking on its nationwide 5G network buildout more than two years ago. Dish's primary 5G vendor is Samsung.

"This validates Dish's strategy," wrote the financial analysts at New Street Research. "It is not clear that the validation will help Dish much beyond providing bragging rights though."

Dish, for its part, has spent roughly $6 billion on its open RAN 5G network so far, and touts coverage across a total of 240 million people. The company expects to expand its coverage starting next year.

"With AT&T putting its weight behind open RAN, it should still bring scale benefits to the ecosystem," added the New Street analysts. "One of the benefits of open RAN is that operators will not be trapped within fixed vendor relationships; equipment from different vendors interoperates more easily. A $14 billion investment from AT&T should benefit the entire ecosystem."

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时间:  2023-12-6 11:23

作者: wqfreebird

逻辑不通呀。原来是爱立信和NOKIA两家，现在是爱立信一家（其他哪些小厂家不算）。如果要Diversity，应该在爱立信、诺基亚的基础上，引入三星、NEC、富士通、Mavenir（惠普、Dell、Intel等先不算）才对呀。
目前是把NOKIA踢出局，份额全部给爱立信，只是爱立信承诺将来能够和富士通合作。这是份额更加集中了，哪里是要Diversity？

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时间:  2023-12-6 11:37

作者: wqfreebird

我是说上面中文这一段逻辑不太通。
对于英文原文，则是看了一个寂寞，看来看去，就是爱立信给AT&T报了一个低价。其他也没有给出有说服力的原因。

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时间:  2023-12-6 12:24

作者: 家园会员

wqfreebird 发表于 2023-12-6 11:23
逻辑不通呀。原来是爱立信和NOKIA两家，现在是爱立信一家（其他哪些小厂家不算）。如果要Diversity，应该在 ...

爱立信只是总包商，负责系统集成和软件。
硬件不用他的
ru富士通 bbu戴尔

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时间:  2023-12-6 13:06

作者: carlzhusz

家园会员 发表于 2023-12-6 12:24
爱立信只是总包商，负责系统集成和软件。
硬件不用他的
ru富士通 bbu戴尔

对的，爱立信是搭建骨架，后面各类厂家都可以进来玩

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时间:  2023-12-6 13:07

作者: carlzhusz

wqfreebird 发表于 2023-12-6 11:37
我是说上面中文这一段逻辑不太通。
对于英文原文，则是看了一个寂寞，看来看去，就是爱立信给AT&T报了一个 ...

英文关键在这段：

As a result of AT&T's shift to Ericsson's open RAN, Stankey said the company hopes to eventually mix and match products from a variety of vendors

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时间:  2023-12-6 13:29

作者: radiocom

逻辑确实不通, 应该保留2到3家共建网络才能说明diversity

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时间:  2023-12-6 16:46

作者: fsxf22

其实oran的目的不仅仅是降成本，更重要的在于解耦

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时间:  2023-12-6 16:47

作者: fsxf22

现在的厂家都建立了软件模块和硬件模块的CBB货架，一块板卡的开发就是不同模块的调用，目的就是为了和研发人员解耦，不管软件工程师还是硬件工程师，谁缺位了或离职了，很容易补位，不会出现一个大牛干了一半走了，接盘侠抱着代码看半天，厂家不能被某些具体的人员耙住了

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时间:  2023-12-6 16:49

作者: fsxf22

美国拆分At&t，对微软、亚马逊的反垄断措施说明美国一贯有这种思路，只是目前形势更迫切

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时间:  2023-12-6 16:50

作者: fsxf22

由于现在头部供应商越来越集中，只能对网络进行操作，只不过网络的物理结构耦合度高，不容易解耦，在一个就是颗粒度，尽可能的分成多个供应源的部件，恨不得每行代码都解耦

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时间:  2023-12-6 16:51

作者: fsxf22

数学上有最优解，但商业上不存在最优解，只有最平衡方案，权衡各种因素硬着头皮也要干

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时间:  2023-12-6 16:58

作者: fsxf22

不能简单的比喻为个体消费者的diy行为，顶流大T还是有一些技术能力设计技术框架、以及工程能力，当然只拥有牌照的边缘运营商、或者被养成了巨婴的大运营商玩这个很吃力

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时间:  2023-12-7 13:45

作者: carlzhusz

fsxf22 发表于 2023-12-6 16:46
其实oran的目的不仅仅是降成本，更重要的在于解耦

解耦和降成本本质是相同的。

本质就为了降成本，针对现在多合一造成的技术门槛，利用解耦降低技术门槛，这样更多玩家才能进来。成本才能真的降下去。等玩家多了，技术熟练了，又会开始多合一来降成本。那时候，原来的大玩家还在不在，还能不能主导，就是另外一回事了

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