AT&T hit the halfway point of its $14 billion wireless network overhaul program, with CEO John Stankey predicting that multi-year program will see 70% of network traffic running over the carrier’s new open architecture by the end of this year.

AT&T’s sweeping wireless network overhaul was initiated in late 2023, touted as a five-year program to deploy open radio access network (RAN) across its network to drive operational efficiency. Stankey at that time said the work would support 70% of wireless traffic through its open RAN platform by the end of 2026, a prediction that was backed this week.

“I think we've done a great job of getting the infrastructure set up and in place,” Stankey noted this week in an Ericsson press release tied to the work. “By the end of this year we'll have about 70% of our traffic on our network flowing over an open architecture.”

Ericsson’s production of that quote is notable as the vendor was tapped as the main equipment supplier and systems integrator for AT&T’s work. This included Ericsson leading work to rip out legacy gear from rival Nokia and replace it with its open RAN equipment and from other vendors like Fujitsu and Mavenir.

The move to rely on Ericsson was a somewhat controversial decision at the time, as the vendor had at that time not been viewed as a proponent of open RAN technology. However, the vendor has since bolstered its open RAN work and has a long history of working within AT&T’s network architecture.

Ericsson is providing its Intelligent Automation Platform (EIAP), which is the vendor’s service management and orchestration (SMO) platform. The EIAP will span across multiple domains, including the service level where it can control the cloud RAN and traditional RAN functions, the radios, and the hardware.

Stankey had previously noted that replacing Nokia’s gear has allowed the carrier to unlock new service opportunities, with the broader move slashing the overall cost of network deployments.

“The fact that we're building open interconnection at that point of the network means that we can have a competitive process of how those radios get built and how we think about them, and that probably allows us to build it less expensively than we might have five years ago,” Stankey told attendees at an investor conference late last year.

AT&T COO Jeff McElfresh echoed that performance-enhancing sentiment this week during an investor conference

“What we're seeing when we have touched these cell sites and really refreshed the technology that's on the towers, we're seeing gains in customer experience, gains in throughput, gains in retainability, gains in performance, and lower cost structures because we've gone to more standard models across these towers so that our operating teams find efficiency in maintaining that RF (radio frequency) environment, and that's just going to continue to improve as we make our way through that transformation,” McElfresh said during this week’s Morgan Stanley Tech, Media & Telecom Conference.

McElfresh added that AT&T was “about halfway through the switch the rip-and-replace of some radios, and we've got another 18 months before we're kind of complete with that program.”

Cloud RAN running

AT&T’s program also includes work on updating its RAN core using a cloud-based RAN architecture.

Rob Soni, VP of RAN technology at AT&T, noted in a blog post this week that the carrier had its cloud RAN architecture live in a pair of unnamed U.S. markets, and is “on track to complete system integrations and start scaling by the end of first quarter.”

Soni added that this cloud RAN effort continues through AT&T’s work with the Acceleration of Compatibility and Commercialization for Open RAN Deployments Consortium (ACCoRD) lab. That lab, which received $42 million in funding from the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and its Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund in early 2024, is tasked with establishing testing protocols for network performance, interoperability, security, and research into new open RAN testing methods.

Soni also noted that AT&T’s cloud RAN work recently hit an “AI milestone” by successfully testing Ericsson’s AI-native Link Adaptation. That test, which ran on Intel Xeon 6 system-on-chip (SoC) hardware, was a test call using AT&T spectrum and Ericsson’s platform that can quickly respond to changing channel conditions and varying interference when determining how much data to transmit at a given time.

Stankey previously explained that the open RAN program has allowed the carrier to “collapse all of our routing infrastructure on a common architecture.”

“So whether it's a mobile core or it's a business core, whatever it might be, that's all on a homogeneous, consistent routing infrastructure, on general purpose compute that dramatically lowers costs associated with that. That's a big damn deal, because it allows us to treat products differently,” Stankey added. “Associated with that, and when you start to open up those interfaces and capabilities, you have the ability to build APIs into your network that allow for your customers to use it more effectively, and have the flexibility … all that work is underway right now, and we feel really good about where it's taking us.”