When discussions turn to the topic of open radio access networks (RAN), the alphabet soup of acronyms representing various groups and technologies can become dizzying. Mavenir CEO Pardeep Kohli likes to cut through the noise and get to the heart of the matter.

“Open RAN is nothing but bringing the RAN in with open interfaces. At the end, that’s all it is,” he told SDxCentral.

A radio paired with a transmit receiver still needs to be hoisted up a tower, and those components need to talk to the baseband unit, which can run on proprietary hardware, general purpose hardware, or a cloud environment, he explained, adding that the latter two options require open interfaces. 

Mavenir recently stepped more aggressively into the cloud space by inking a deal that integrates its software with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for operators, including Dish, that choose to move some or all workloads to the public cloud. “We’ll make similar announcements with the other cloud vendors as well,” Kohli said, adding that work is already underway with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud.

“If the whole idea is that 5G is going to enable these applications running in the cloud to be more accessible to the end user at a much faster pace and latency, then that means it’s better to bring the network onto the cloud as well,” he said.

Mavenir’s open RAN software will be fully supported in AWS by August, in time for Dish Network to meet its goal of activating 5G service in Las Vegas and other cities this fall. The aspiring greenfield open RAN operator doesn’t describe its recent agreement with AWS as an exclusive arrangement, but it sure looks and sounds like one as it plans to house everything it can in the world’s largest public cloud.

While these frameworks require both the operator and vendors to have deals with AWS, or the public cloud of the operator’s choosing, the money flows between the carrier and hyperscaler, and the carrier and Mavenir in this case, Kohli explained. “It’s not that we are just buying something from Amazon or Amazon is buying something from us.”

Dish is an outlier in many respects. Most operators are striking less expansive deals with hyperscalers, focusing on private and public edge computing opportunities, This scenario effectively positions operator networks as the mobile connectivity layer between distributed cloud infrastructure and the third-party developers and businesses that use that infrastructure.

“Why vendors like Mavenir need to be running in their environment is because if the operator wants to spin up an instance of the packet core within the AWS Outpost, you need an application that can run natively within that Outpost stack. And not every vendor out there can do it,” Mavenir’s Chief Strategy Officer Bejoy Pankajakshan said.

Mavenir is determined to remain neutral with respect to the clouds that natively support its software. “We don’t make the choice. We just enable our software on different choices that operators make because the actual economics is between the operator and the cloud vendor,” Kohli said. 

Nonetheless, Pankajakshan noted that most 5G operators are starting their cloud journey with AWS because the cloud giant also presents carriers with a massive community of enterprise customers to potentially tap into. “As long as the toolset is available and you’ve got more enterprises connected to the AWS cloud, that’s a reason for an operator to pick AWS,” he said.

However, “in terms of readiness, all of these cloud providers today have some gaps here or there when it comes to telco applications,” Pankajakshan said, adding that each hyperscaler has unique toolkits and pedigree in specific technologies.

He also contends that mobile operators and cloud providers are in a symbiotic relationship right now, despite real concerns about the role of a network operator in a post-cloud world.

“One of them wants to control the network infrastructure. They’re both relying on each other. Hyperscalers want to get more traffic to their cloud, and one way to do that is the operator’s network being enabled for 5G and that will push more traffic into the cloud infrastructure,” he said.

Hyperscalers are a “means to an end. The end is the actual application which we offer. So as long as we enable them to have this available on many choices, they’re not really locked in,” Kohli said. 

“At the end, you have to point the radio to go to one, or two, or three places as long as you can assure the connectivity,” he added. “You could actually have a scenario where you can have all three of them compete for the business, and it’s easy to move from one to the other.”