What is the 5G Open RAN Policy Alliance established by Microsoft, Google, Samsung and other giants?

According to foreign media reports, the Open RAN Policy Coalition, founded by several companies in the mobile ecosystem, was officially launched recently. Its purpose is to advocate government policies that will help promote the development of Open RAN technology.

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Diane Rinaldo, former acting administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), serves as the organization's executive director.

“As the current global pandemic has shown, vendor choice and flexibility in next-generation network deployments are necessary from a security and performance perspective,” Diane Rinaldo said in a statement. “By promoting policies that standardize and develop open interfaces, we can ensure interoperability and security among different players and potentially lower barriers to entry for new innovators.”

In addition to AT&T and Verizon, Dish Network, which has announced that it will build its upcoming 5G network based on the Open RAN architecture, is also a member of the Open RAN Policy Alliance. Telefonica, Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo and Rakuten, the earliest international operators to support the development of Open RAN technology, are also members.

Cloud service providers including Amazon AWS, Google, and Microsoft have also joined. At the same time, Dell, Intel, IBM, VMWare, Samsung, and Qualcomm are also on the list of members.

Other members include Airspan, Altiostar, Mavenir, NEC, Parallel Wireless, Cisco, CommScope, Fujitsu, Juniper Networks, NewEdge Signal Solutions, Oracle, US Ignite, World Wide Technology and XCOM-Labs.

Notably, T-Mobile did not join, nor did its largest suppliers Ericsson and Nokia appear on the list of members.

Diane Rinaldo outlined some of the steps the organization believes policymakers can take to promote the development of the Open RAN ecosystem, including: supporting the global development of open and interoperable wireless technologies; clarifying government support for open and interoperable solutions; using government procurement to support supplier diversity; and funding research and development.

The Open RAN Policy Coalition is intended to complement the standards work of the O-RAN Alliance and the global deployment driven by Facebook’s TIP. Facebook is also a founding member of the new alliance.

"At the heart of TIP's work is the development and deployment of open, disaggregated, standardized solutions -- developed in conjunction with operators," TIP Executive Director Attilio Zani said in a statement. "These efforts, along with a policy environment that supports new technologies to flourish, will create greater opportunities for new entrants and lead to a more diverse supply chain, which will ultimately transform the industry to deliver the high-quality network connectivity the world needs today and for decades to come."

The new alliance believes that multi-vendor deployments provide operators with greater flexibility and ability to manage their networks, while promoting a more competitive market, compared to traditional proprietary single-vendor network architectures.