DENVER – Boost Mobile CTO Eben Albertyn continued to bash Broadcom for VMware pricing changes that resulted in the nascent operator swapping out an important management layer of its cloud-based 5G network.

Albertyn during a “fireside chat” at this week’s CCA Mobile Carriers Show kicked off his overview of Boost Mobile’s most recent re-invention by pointing to “some big challenges in the software role with container-as-a-service [CaaS].”

“We felt we were not going to be price gouged, so we've made some changes on the CaaS layer that has allowed us to actually now be faster and better than what we were before, because we have open RAN and we're able to make these changes very, very quickly,” Albertyn said, later adding that “the predatory pricing that showed up from VMware, price gouging from some other people is not something that we looked forward to.”

Boost Mobile last year made the bold move to swap out its legacy VMware-based CaaS platform for one from Wind River, which the carrier is now using to manage its containerized edge-to-cloud applications.

The Wind River Studio Operator platform is a cloud-native 5G edge network middleware based on Kubernetes and containers that provides operators with a platform to develop, deploy, operate, and manage 5G distributed edge clouds. It’s based on the open source StarlingX project, which is part of the Open Infrastructure Foundation, and integrates OpenStack, Kubernetes, and Ceph to support network edge computing use cases.

Boost Mobile had been working with VMware on the CaaS layer of its unique open network architecture. It initially announced work with VMware in mid-2020, using that vendor’s Telco Cloud platform to provide the underlying cloud platform and infrastructure to power its open radio access network (RAN) (RAN)-based 5G network.

The VMware platform provides an abstraction layer running across multiple network domains that allows operators to tap into hyperscale public cloud capacity while maintaining core control points. Boost Mobile management had previously stated they had tested and onboarded “dozens” of cloud-native 5G network functions from “multiple software vendors” on top of the VMware Telco Cloud platform that used its embedded Kubernetes container orchestration capabilities and cloud-native principles to “dynamically move and scale workloads within the cloud, based on consumer demand.”

However, Broadcom, which closed on its acquisition of VMware in late 2023, revamped VMware’s legacy pricing structure for a subscription-based model that has caused an uproar from many sectors.

Albertyn in an earlier interview with SDxCentral said the carrier made the swap based on what he termed “cost effectiveness” or a combination of “operational performance, strategic roadmap, and overall cost.”

“Performance combined with price combined with strategic roadmap going forward, the combination of those, we are able to evaluate with open RAN, decide whether the disposition that we have right now and the vendor landscape that we have right now is at the most optimal inflection point, and if it’s not – as in this case is the matter – so where we consider those three factors combined, and we compare it against what the market is able to offer us, we can see that we can make a better decision when it comes to those three components,” Albertyn said.

Albertyn at that time did not mention VMware specifically, but he did point to a then issue larger rival AT&T was having with a vendor. AT&T had been locked in a high-profile support dispute with Broadcom over licensing and billing changes it had made to its VMware services.

“It’s public information, but you’ve seen that AT&T has a problem with a software vendor where that software vendor is deeply entrenched in their systems and so fiddling with that is dangerous,” Albertyn said. “Obviously the recourse that AT&T needs to take is to take other forms of steps because changing those things are hard. I’m naming AT&T because they’re in telecom, but I can probably quote somebody from banking or a lot of other places where there are pieces of software that it’s operationally very risky for them to touch it, and therefore you have a disproportionate relationship in that engagement.”

Boost Mobile found somethings easier, some harder Albertyn this week noted that Boost Mobile was able to make the CaaS swap due to its open 5G network core. This architecture relies on components based on open standards that if followed allow the seamless exchange of those platforms.

Albertyn did admit that Boost Mobile struggled through the initial deployment, hindered by it being one of the first in the world to push a greenfield cloud-native deployment. But, the move has allowed the carrier to be more aggressive in vendor management.

“I think open RAN and the technologies that we've used goes far and beyond just that of the radio, it changes the entire way of interacting with your supply chain and your landscape, and there is a lot more control that allows you to manipulate cost and quality in a way that suits your situation,” Albertyn said. “We didn't want to go through all of these pains. We didn't want to go through these changes, but we were, I think, extremely grateful that we had the opportunity to change at will when you're in the situation changed.”

Those changes included having to become the de-facto systems integrator (SI) for its own network deployment, which it initially wanted to have its vendors deal with.

“We were of the conviction that we could go into this journey with the use of partners, and they would actually help us to do most of the heavy lift. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. We actually crashed-and-burned completely,” Albertyn explained. “We had to become the systems integrator ourselves. We had to become an architect and the creator of the underlying infrastructure of the network itself. And we had to become the hub of the spokes around. That was a surprise and a huge slap in the face. We realized that the route that we fashioned was a complete dead end.”

The executive did point to progress coming out of that challenge, specifically noting the carrier recently was judged by Accenture as having the best network in New York City. Though Albertyn also admitted to a host of challenges in getting to this point.

“The last surprise was just how unbelievably hard it is to get site permitting,” Albertyn said of tower and radio deployments. “There are some places where we waited 18 months for an electricity connection, which is not something that I would prefer.”