Japan’s NTT DoCoMo has thrown its support around the commercial viability of open radio access Network (RAN) technology despite claims from fellow operators that the disaggregated technology needs time to gel.

NTT DoCoMo’s support pledge centers around the operators newly launched OREX platforms, which are designed to provide customizable options of pre-certified open RAN components. These are packaged for RAN, service NFV management and network orchestration (MANO) (SMO) and services.

Sadayuki Abeta, global head of open RAN solutions at NTT DoCoMo, told SDxCentral at MWC Las Vegas event that the OREX platform is designed to simplify the deployment of open RAN. Abeta said this includes challenges with integration, balancing power consumption with performance and the operation of an open RAN ecosystem.

OREX launched with 13 vendor partners, including AMD, Dell Technologies, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Intel, Mavenir, NEC, NTT Data, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Red Hat, VMware and Wind River.

“This is an open ecosystem working together with multiple vendors,” Abeta said. “We have software vendors, we have hardware vendors, we have accelerator vendors. We support multiple combinations according to an operator’s requests.”

This last point highlights that NTT DoCoMo is acting basically as the systems integrator for operators. “We provide the solution to the operator as a single contact, so the operator just asks DoCoMo and we fix everything,” Abeta said.

This level of comfort comes from NTT DoCoMo itself actually using the OREX platform for its own 5G Network in Japan.

The OREX concept is similar to that of fellow Japan-based operator Rakuten, which launched its Symphony division in 2021. That division used expertise from Rakuten’s own open RAN and cloud-native network deployment efforts to build a precertified ecosystem of vendors and equipment that operators can more easily plug into their own networks.

Notably missing from the initial OREX vendor list are RAN suppliers like Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and Huawei.

“They have their own RAN, they have their own [radio units] and they have their own interfaces so we can’t choose that,” Adeta said.

Those vendors have to varying degrees been moving toward more open interfaces for their products. The most recent being Ericsson’s agreement with Telefónica to increase that vendor’s adoption of open RAN components using specifications from the O-RAN Alliance.

This vendor dynamic remains one of the larger hurdles toward broader open RAN deployments. While NTT DoCoMo does have a solid lineup of OREX partners, they lack the scale of the market’s larger players.

Abeta said this has resulted in pricing challenges for those smaller vendors. “If they can provide 10,000 to 100,000 [units] then they can provide it very cheaply, but that is a challenge for open RAN in commercial [networks], it’s an issue of [total cost of ownership],” Abeta said.

Joe Russo, EVP and president of Verizon’s global networks and technology business, told SDxCentral at the MWC Las Vegas event that the open RAN ecosystem is also challenged by technology scaling.

“At this point, what I typically say is we’re doing a lot of testing, we’re very interested in what that comes to be, but we don’t see it today at scale,” Russo said of open RAN. “It’s not to say that it won’t be at some point, but I think there’s a lot of roads in front of us on the [open RAN] space, so we’ll see how that evolves.”

Russo noted that some of the bigger open RAN challenges remain around interoperability, software, the ability to scale and performance.

“We have very high-performance standards on the Verizon Network when it comes to voice, when it comes to data, when it comes to getting on the network, staying on the network and being able to do what you have to do. Generally, you know, it’s a pretty high bar if you’re going to work inside of the Verizon Network,” Russo said. “It’s been a challenge to make sure that those performance levels are met. … It’s early. I’m not saying that we’re not interested in it. I certainly will see where it takes us.”

Russo also backed Verizon’s larger vendor partners in being able to stay at the forefront of technology development.

“We are very aware of making sure that the [research and development] pipeline for all of our suppliers is robust,” Russo said. “Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, we do a lot of business with all in a lot of different ways, and I think that's important for us, it's important for the industry and it's important for them. Whether it's radios or in the core or in the transport layer, there's a lot of innovation that happens across those spaces and we try to make sure that we're getting the best in all those places.”