Cisco, like most major vendors supporting open radio access network (RAN) architecture, wants to rise above the fray and move past the internal politics and power struggle playing out at the O-RAN Alliance.

“There’s always going to be kerfuffles, but the fundamentals of the technologies have held very true. Having a software-defined anything is always better than having a locked-in appliance,” Cisco EVP Jonathan Davidson said during a phone interview.

The latest kerfuffle at the O-RAN Alliance became more of a short-lived crisis that pinned the group’s status quo against Nokia and its concerns about some Chinese vendors’ participation in technical activities. Nokia resumed its technical work after the O-RAN Alliance made some unpublished changes to its procedures.

At least two Chinese companies blacklisted by the U.S. government are still O-RAN Alliance members.

Davidson declined to comment on the ongoing geopolitical and trade challenges facing the alliance and open RAN at large, but noted Cisco remains a big supporter of open RAN and pledged the company will do everything it can to help the open RAN community move forward.

“We’re going to keep doing what we've been doing and all the rest of this stuff will sort itself out as more and more customers deploy open RAN technologies,” Davidson said.

Cisco recognizes that governments have roles to play in technology development, and it has lobbied governments around the world to support open RAN since its infancy as a means to drive innovation, he said. 

Beyond that, while skirting a question about Cisco’s position on O-RAN Alliance membership rules, Davidson said Cisco follows government regulations in every country it operates.

“Cisco’s always believed you drive innovation through competition and open interfaces,” he said. “IP wouldn’t be the dominant form of communication if it was a closed infrastructure. That’s just a fact, so we want to make sure that you apply those fundamentals to all the other various areas.”

As such, Open RAN requires open interfaces that are treated as open interfaces, Davidson explained. “The technology still has fundamental merits. There’s still a huge desire for openness, and the people who want to deploy it are going to deploy it. So either you get in line and you help work with them to get deployed, or you miss out on the opportunity.

“I think it’s really that black and white. I’m as bullish as I ever was on the technology stack.”

Operators can and are forcing open RAN to happen with their pocket books, he said. This is what Davidson calls “the coalition of the willing to deploy.” That level of buy-in paired with commercial deployments is “what moves technology and, I think the people who are willing to deploy, none of this has changed their perspective,” he added.

“If we just get together and define standards, but then nobody pays to deploy them it doesn’t matter.”

Standards and specifications-setting bodies play important roles, but Davidson said “my bias is always toward those who write code and those who are willing to deploy at scale.”

Striking that balance between specifications development and writing code keeps technologists grounded in reality, he said. 

“As far as which standards bodies” open RAN should flow through, Davidson concluded: “I don’t have an opinion.”