The pursuit of disaggregated, open radio access networks (RAN) today coalesced into a more formally collective effort with a new coalition of 31 founding companies. The Open RAN Policy Coalition has support from seven operators and 24 vendors, though at launch it's noticeably lacking support from the three largest RAN vendors.

The coalition appears to overlap and likely compete with the O-RAN Alliance, which was founded in February 2018 following the merger of the x-RAN Forum and C-RAN Alliance. The O-RAN Alliance, which has support from 23 operators and 142 vendors, including Ericsson and Nokia, also recently formed a collaborative agreement with the Facebook-led Telecom Infra Project (TIP) to align on the development of open RAN.

“This coalition illustrates that there is significant activity behind the scenes for open RAN and we expect this to be a major milestone in the development of an open and modularized infrastructure ecosystem,” said Dimitris Mavrakis, research director at ABI Research, in a statement. “Incumbent vendors, who have so far been somewhat resisting open RAN, will now be under tremendous pressure to adopt this approach or face a massive disruption of their business looking forward.” 

ABI Research expects open RAN to mature quickly and become a “viable alternative for 5G network deployments in the next few years.” Rakuten Mobile, a founding member of the coalition, recently deployed the world’s first fully virtualized, open RAN riding on cloud-native infrastructure and it plans to upgrade its 4G LTE network to 5G in a couple of months.

Parallel Wireless, another founding member of the Open RAN Policy Coalition, doesn’t view the effort as duplicative because it’s focused on building an ecosystem of vendors, operators, regulators, governments, and system integrators. Meanwhile, the O-RAN Alliance and TIP are focused on writing specifications and driving deployments and adoption, respectively, according to the vendor. 

“We see this coalition as an important addition to the standards work that O-RAN Alliance is doing and also global deployments driven by TIP,” said Steve Papa, CEO at Parallel Wireless, in a statement.

TIP Executive Director Attilo Zani echoed those comments in his endorsement of the coalition, adding that it signifies momentum for open RAN. TIP’s work with operators on standards and deployments combined with a “supportive policy environment that allows new technology to flourish, will create greater opportunities for new entrants and a more diverse supply chain that will ultimately transform the industry,” he said in a statement.

The Open RAN Policy Coalition aims to promote policies that standardize and develop open interfaces and lower the barrier to entry for newcomers, explained Diane Rinaldo, executive director of the coalition. The group also called out the U.S. government as an important ally and facilitator of an open and diverse supply chain by funding research, testing, and otherwise incentivizing those goals. 

“Open RAN networks are a significant departure from the traditional industry model and legislators need to know the advantages and how government actions can help accelerating the development and employment of open and interoperable solutions,” said Thierry Maupilé, EVP at Altiostar, in a statement. The open RAN vendor says it has been pushing for this outcome since its founding in 2011, and it’s been gaining momentum the last few years with operator deployments. 

Pardeep Kohli, CEO at Mavenir, another U.S.-based open RAN vendor supporting the coalition, said he is excited to see a coalescence around open RAN and believes the approach taken by the Open RAN Policy Coalition will further promote competition and innovation. 

Other founding members include: Airspan, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AT&T, Cisco, CommScope, Dell, Dish Network, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NEC, NewEdge Signal Solutions, NTT, Oracle, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics America, Telefónica, US Ignite, Verizon, VMware, Vodafone, World Wide Technology, and XCOM.