Canadian telecommunications operator Telus tapped Samsung to underpin that country’s first open radio access network (RAN) deployment. However, the carrier noted that the open RAN ecosystem’s very nature is providing the necessary “tension” to provide a competitive vendor environment.

Telus’s plans call for Samsung to provide open RAN and virtualized RAN (vRAN) equipment for the Canadian operator. This will include vRAN software, open RAN-compliant hardware and support for third-party radio integration.

The software will run on Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE's) ProLiant DL110 servers using Intel’s 4th-generation Xeon processors and vRAN Boost technology.

Bernard Bureau, VP for wireless strategy and 5G services at Telus, explained in an interview with SDxCentral that the deployment will initially target half of the carrier’s network that is up for a “refresh.” The complete refresh will be completed by the end of 2027.

“The first iteration of that is going to be, for example, when our baseband runs out of capacity,” Bureau said. “Rather than continuing to buy more bespoke hardware, we're going to turn this into vRAN, and we're going to have a way to convert the existing traditional radios that are out there to interact through a traditional RAN to [open RAN] converter so that we can add open RAN radios above and beyond what's already deployed on existing sites.”

The second part of this transition is tied to a Canadian government mandate that requires Canadian telecommunications operators to remove legacy equipment from China-based vendors and also prohibits them from using any new equipment from those vendors. That mandate specifically cites equipment from Huawei and ZTE, and is similar to mandates imposed by other Western governments.

“So essentially we are replacing all of the Huawei equipment that we had before and abiding by the Canadian government's ask,” Bureau said.

Samsung will be taking on integration responsibilities for Telus, which will include different open RAN radio vendors. Bureau said the carrier was not yet ready to announce additional radio vendor partners, but would likely name names in a couple of months.

Stephen Wiktorski, VP and head of networks for Samsung Canada, noted that Samsung has been working with this third-party vendor, which itself has been conducting additional integration testing.

“It helps if those parties have done integration before and are committed to making it successful and I think that's what you've got with Samsung and this third party,” Wiktorski said.

This integration work is similar to what Ericsson is doing with AT&T. That agreement drew questions from some of Ericsson’s rivals – including Samsung – who questioned the openness of such a move.

“I think the question of having one supplier sort of be the gatekeeper to that activity I think is a choice, and we’ll just have to see how it plays out,” Alok Shah, VP of strategy and marketing for Samsung Electronics America’s networks business, told SDxCentral in an interview following AT&T's decision. “I think it’s always helpful to have leverage is what it comes down to. If one supplier has 100% of the network and they’re going to have dominant market share in the U.S. and pretty strong globally, I think that it creates some questions about how this will go.”

Analysts countered that argument by stating the still evolving nature of the open RAN ecosystem contains multivendor integration complexity that will drive initial open RAN deployments toward a more simplified architecture.

“The more vendors you have in your network, regardless of it being open RAN or non-open RAN, the more vendors you have, the more complex the network. That is inescapable, even if everybody is interoperable,” Monica Paolini, founder and president of analyst and consulting firm Senza Fili, told SDxCentral in an interview.

Telus’s Bureau countered the multivendor concern by stating that the open RAN ecosystem provides “tension” between vendors, which helps alleviate those concerns.

“With [open RAN], because you have that capability of changing partners without changing any hardware, you already have the fact with that tension,” Bureau said. “There is a possibility that you're trading complexity in the old way you used to do things because now having multiple vendors all the time you're duplicating everything in your lab, you're duplicating everything on validating the roadmaps and you're trying to put a lot of effort in making sure that you, as a [mobile network operator], you are providing a national service that is aligned regardless of who's the radio vendor.”

Bureau added that Telus is “very happy with Samsung, obviously, otherwise we would not be talking, but I'm going back to what I said before. We have the ability to give that business to who merits it and certainly some merit that now and I'm very confident that they're going to merit it also in the future. But should something happen, I don't need to have necessarily a second vendor to provide unnecessary pressure on Samsung, because it's [open RAN] and it’s vRAN.”