Samsung expects growing adoption of advanced 5G technologies and support systems like virtualized radio access network (RAN) and open RAN architectures will start to trickle down to smaller telecommunication operators, goosed by government funding that is starting to ooze into the market and new service opportunities like fixed-wireless access (FWA).

Tier-one operators like AT&T and Verizon are already fully on board the vRAN and open RAN bandwagon, but that enthusiasm has yet to trickle down to legacy tier-two and tier-three operators.

Sanil Ramachandran, director of technology at Samsung Electronics America, explained to SDxCentral in an interview that these tier-two and tier-three operators generally follow with new technology after it has been validated and matured in the market.

“We have had good success with Verizon with vRAN as well as Dish with open RAN,” Ramachandran said. “Some of the tier-two, tier-three operators are more willing to try and there are some specific use cases but in general they are still not there yet.”

That trepidation is tied to financial concerns both for the equipment needed and also for training.

“These operators are not like the tier-one operators that have a huge team of people running the network,” Ramachandran said. “It's a small team who's actually doing the day-to-day managing of the network and running the network, and that retraining that they require to run and operate a virtualized open RAN network is slightly different, and they understand that. I think they want to take this transition at a slower pace, and it's natural given the size that they have.”

TJ Maan, senior director of technical sales and partner go-to-market at Samsung Networks, noted that the vendor is seeing support help materialize from ecosystem partners “that are stepping in and looking at models for 5G particularly that have a hosted core that could be a shared service for operators.”

“[Small operators] just don’t have the expertise, especially with services-based architectures,” Maan said. “You have to know things like [virtual machines] and containers, and it can get a bit daunting. That's where our partners are open to this idea of providing a hosted service on the RAN side.”

Building the 5G telecom business case Maan also noted that the financial angle is starting to get a boost from government funding that is slowly starting to infiltrate the market. The biggest chunk of that government funding will come from the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, which has allocated $42.5 billion in funds that will be distributed to all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories to expand broadband access.

Maan noted that he expects the market could become “more interesting in the next 18 to 24 months as the money really starts to flow through these state broadband offices.”

Some states have already started to disperse some of those funds, which could help smaller operators to invest in new technology and services. One of those potential services is the 5G-based FWA space where the larger operators have found a vein of gold.

Maan noted that while these larger carriers are taking advantage of excess capacity on their standard 5G network deployments, smaller operators are moving on specific 5G-based FWA networks.

“The operators that are interested in going after BEAD are looking to build out a standalone wireless network for home broadband, at least in places where they can't roll out fiber or it's just too expensive,” Maan said. “They're actually standing up these FWA networks with the intent that this is a standardized 3GPP-based network with a core that can interoperate provide operator services. Almost every single one of these customers that we have deployed with and our trialing have looked at being able to sell access to these networks to an AT&T or T-Mobile for roaming capabilities and drive additional revenue streams.”

These opportunities are also bleeding into other verticals, including business and enterprise verticals. Maan cited use cases like precision agriculture, autonomous farm equipment, smart factories, and private 5G systems.

“The operators are looking at business as the early monetization opportunity for 5G in terms of workforce automation, in terms of industrial IoT-type of applications, mission-critical communication services,” Maan said. “This is definitely a conversation we are having with operators while they wait for funding. These are interesting ways that they can engage enterprise customers to go try and sell private 5G types of services.”