By John Baker
Last week, the Federal Communications Commission released its assessment of just how much it will cost to rip and replace banned Chinese equipment out of U.S. communications networks: $1.84 billion.
This staggering figure is nearly double what Congress initially planned in its passage of the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, which requires U.S. telecom companies to rid Huawei and ZTE hardware from their networks. But while it’s up to Congress to determine how much money to appropriate for companies updating their infrastructure, there’s something the FCC can do by itself to make sure this arduous undertaking isn’t needed again: Explicitly allow and encourage affected carriers to follow OpenRAN principles of open interfaces and network element interoperability as they update their networks.
Consider the options facing the mobile carriers that need substitute equipment. These operators have traditionally only been able to choose from a small handful of network infrastructure providers — essentially Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia — and each of these foreign behemoths has served their customers with clunky, proprietary hardware. By contrast, the flexible nature of OpenRAN lets operators choose from a wide range of different suppliers — several of whom, like Mavenir, are headquartered in the U.S. — and run their networks via secure software in the cloud. These two factors essentially help carriers “future-proof” their networks — it’s easy to switch vendors, and network upgrades can become as easy as downloading new software.
On the other hand: Think of the scenario in which rural carriers are forced to rely heavily on one or two legacy providers, and in a few years the supplier faces financial trouble, falls behind technologically, or is found to have security flaws in their products. We’ll be right back where we are today, spending billions in taxpayer dollars to plod through the slow process of rippling out unworkable hardware.
If the federal government is going to spend potentially $2 billion to replace Huawei and ZTE’s unsecure, outdated, and proprietary equipment, it just makes sense to replace it with secure modern, and scalable OpenRAN solutions — especially those that are built by American companies.
And not only is OpenRAN the antidote to the closed, proprietary systems that incumbents peddle — it’s also cheaper. Mobile carriers who switch to OpenRAN see 40 percent lower capital expenditures and 34 percent lower operating expenditures, according to an analysis we undertook with Senza Fili Consulting — a benefit that could help take a bite out of that $1.84 billion price tag. And as the largely rural carriers affected by this law eventually move toward deploying 5G, these cost savings will help them deploy next-generation networks more quickly and bring game-changing applications like connected cars, advanced telemedicine and the Internet of Things to every corner of the country.
The FCC is hosting a forum on OpenRAN and 5G next week, where I hope participants will join me in making this call for foresight. The good news is that policymakers increasingly understand that to strengthen American leadership in 5G, we cannot bet on just one or two companies — we must pursue a more competitive approach. The implementation of the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act is a major avenue for doing so, and the best step the FCC can take is encouraging carriers to replace Huawei and ZTE technology with OpenRAN products.
John Baker is Mavenir’s Senior Vice President for Business Development.
