Verizon might find open radio access network (RAN) talk from its rivals “entertaining,” but that doesn’t mean it can’t also join in the festivities.

The carrier this week stated it has deployed more than 130,000 open RAN “capable” radios that are compatible with specifications from the O-RAN Alliance. These radios include massive multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology.

“Verizon is fully supportive of O-RAN technology and is focused on commercializing an operationally sound O-RAN architecture,” Adam Koeppe, SVP of technology planning at Verizon, noted in the post. “Our commitment to developing O-RAN standards and to deploying compliant equipment in our active radio access network is helping to drive the industry forward which will result in a variety of tangible benefits for our customers who expect leading-edge technology from Verizon.”

The latest Verizon post also highlights the carrier’s underlying work in deploying a virtualized RAN (vRAN) architecture that provide a foundation for its open RAN roll out. Verizon’s vRAN work dates back to early 2019, with Koeppe recently telling SDxCentral that the carrier had more than 15,000 vRAN sites.

“That’s an internal cloud that we design, build, own and upgrade,” Koeppe said. “We view that as a competitive differentiator and you’ll see continued expansion of that in 2024.”

Verizon’s latest announcement comes two months after rival AT&T announced plans to spend $14 billion over the the next five years to deploy open RAN equipment with the goal of having 70% of its wireless network traffic flowing through its open RAN platform by the end of 2026. That work builds on AT&T’s long-running efforts to virtualize its network infrastructure.

Nascent mobile operator Dish Network is relying exclusively on an open RAN and vRAN architecture for its 5G network. The carrier counts more than 16,000 open RAN cell sites currently operational with plans for 20,000 sites by the end of 2024.

(Don’t attempt to compare open RAN cell sites number apples-to-apples as operators are counting “radios” and “cell sites” differently. Verizon, for instance, is claiming 130,000 O-RAN-compliant radios, but each site can contain multiple radios.)

T-Mobile US has been more subdued in terms of its open RAN work, with former network executive Neville Ray telling SDxCentral last year that the technology lacked maturity when the carrier kicked off its expansive network upgrade program.

“For us, we didn’t go down on open RAN path when we made our big vendor decisions three years ago,” Ray said. “The pace and scale that we were moving on, features and capabilities we needed, the ecosystem just was not ready. And the O-RAN guys will tell you that.”

Koeppe told SDxCentral that “it’s actually entertaining seeing so many of our competitors talk about O-RAN,” but that Verizon remains focused on solidifying the open tenets of the open RAN ecosystem. Koeppe specifically cited ongoing interoperability challenges between functions in an open RAN environment.

“Today, the baseband function and the radio function, they actually use an interface called CPRI, which is common public radio interface, and it’s not really common at all,” Koeppe said. “Each supplier, and it’s typically the same supplier for the baseband and the radio, they put their secret sauce into that interface to ensure that both sides of the equation work well. Well, that’s not open. We want to ensure that O-RAN actually has an open interface between the two sides of the equation, the baseband and the radio.”

Brownfield operators have so far leveraged interoperability challenges by focusing their open RAN deployments around a select number of vendors running on simplified platforms. AT&T, for instance, has so far only announced Ericsson as its main open RAN platform supplier and Fujitsu as a provider of radio equipment.

Koeppe noted that Verizon does have “a large proliferation of O-RAN capable equipment already in our network, so that’s good,” but work remains.

“What we know works is a single supplier O-RAN, meaning it’s one supplier for the baseband and the radio following the O-RAN spec. We know that works, and that’s good. We’ve seen a lot of progress there,” Koeppe said. “What we need to prove can be highly effective and reliable is a multivendor O-RAN deployment, meaning I’ve got a different supplier for the baseband and different supplier for the radio using that open O-RAN interface to work in a high-traffic environment, high-quality environment.”