Ericsson’s regional carrier unit for North America could soon be spending up to half of its time ripping out and replacing equipment from Chinese vendors.

The rip-and-replace effort, which is mandated by the U.S. government following its decision to ban Huawei and ZTE equipment from U.S. networks, has put many small carriers in a tough spot.

The Federal Communications Commission is still working through the process, including a reimbursement program for operators that rely on the now forbidden gear. A $900 billion coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress in late 2020 includes $1.9 billion to fund the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, which became law in the early weeks of the COVID-19 crisis.

Planning activities are ramping up in the meantime, and Ericsson is working with multiple regional carriers to determine configuration requirements and pricing, Bill Chotiner, VP and CTO of Ericsson’s regional carrier unit for North America, told SDxCentral.

“Changing out a network like this is not so easy because you have a network with existing subscribers so you have to actually try to not have any impact on those subscribers,” he said, adding that operators also have to learn how to manage and operate new equipment that will work differently. 

Ericsson is engaged with more than 100 regional and rural carriers in North America, and about 30 are actively upgrading network infrastructure outside of the rip-and-replace activities. Most of the carriers that need to replace Chinese equipment are new customers to Ericsson, but some already use pieces of the vendor's equipment, Chotiner said.

When these activities get underway, he expects the nationwide effort to take a few years. Some regional networks are very small with less than 50 sites, but others are much larger.

“Some of these carriers have fairly complex and large networks, so we’re trying to figure out how do you get this amount of equipment to a site at the same time, and have the crews available, and try to work through all of that in a fairly tight replacement schedule,” Chotiner said.

For core network replacement, “you’re probably looking at a minimum of six to eight months, and that’s if you can go full speed on it,” he added. 

Because the rip-and-replace program is all encompassing, some operators have to swap out technology in the network core and radio access network (RAN). This includes databases, back-office integration with billing systems, and network operations centers. “From the radio perspective, here you’re talking about potentially having to go out, change out cell sites, and keep similar performance so the subscribers don’t see too much of an impact,” Chotiner said.

Rip-and-replace programs are expected to get underway soon, comprising about 40% of Ericsson’s regional carrier activities in North America, and eventually involve about half of the business unit’s workload when activities are at a peak, he added.

Carriers impacted by these efforts also face cultural challenges in addition to the logistical and technical issues, he added. “A lot of these customers are very independent," and that independence was expressed in previous technology decisions.

“They don’t like things to be done for them either. They like to do a lot of it themselves, and right now there’s so much work they sort of have to accept that, and that’s not so comfortable to them,” he added.

Meanwhile, regional carriers are confronting the same challenges as their larger competitors with respect to virtualization, making money off 5G, and gauging the viability of open RAN.

Many operators have already virtualized their network cores, but RAN is another matter entirely. Most regional carriers are curious about open RAN, but considering the deadlines they’ll soon face and the maturity of open RAN, most have determined the technology isn’t the right fit at this time, Chotiner said. 

“There are some corner cases where open RAN could make some sense, but in general a lot of them have found that it is adding a lot of risk to the project,” he said. “There’s some question as well about what does it mean really to mix and match radios and baseband or compute; is it really going to be what the promise is? That’s not so clear yet, either.”

One of Ericsson’s regional carrier customers deployed small pieces of open RAN a few years ago, and it worked OK, “but when they started loading it up, they replaced it,” Chotiner said. “Over time, I think you will see open RAN move into these markets. Just when you look at the timelines and the risk of disrupting your subscribers in a rip, I don’t think it’s that favorable. There’s a few exceptions.”