Neutral host and private network infrastructure provider is set to be a major investor in Open RAN network technology as it seeks solutions that meet its requirements on sustainability and speed of deployment.
Seán Keating is Boldyn’s UK and Ireland CTO, and therefore someone RAN vendors should be listening to. Why? Well, although Boldyn is not an MNO in the traditional sense, it’s a big spender on mobile network technology.
The Port of Blyth is the site of a recent privte network provided by Boldyn.
In the UK Boldyn is most notably building out the London TFL contract, which supports mobile coverage in stations and tunnels. That fibre part of that roll out also gives Boldyn the core infrastructure to support street level small cell neutral host deployments, connecting its data centres to clusters of small cells on street lights, converted phone kiosks and bus shelters. The company is already liaising with UK operators on this design, and was mentioned recently by EE as part of that operators’ small cell armoury.
Elsewhere the company provides in-building neutral host services indoors and outdoors, and it has branched into private networks, owning its own spectrum under Ofcom’s Shared Access Licence regime.
To meet all these requirements, Boldyn buys radio software and hardware, installs it, and then offers it on neutral host terms, or as dedicated private networks, to MNO or enterprise customers.
That makes it quite a significant buyer of RAN equipment. Recently, Keating says, that spend has shifted towards Open RAN vendors, for a couple of reasons. That means the company should represent a good target customer for Open RAN vendors.
“I would say so. We’re a big spender generally and that’s starting to shift towards Open RAN. There’s huge potential there,” Keating said.
“We are investing quite heavily in Open RAN,” he continued. One reason the company likes Open RAN solutions is its commitment to sustainability goals.
“Open virtualised RAN solutions are kind of 60-65% more power efficient, and much faster to deliver,” Keating claimed.
Some would dispute whether Open RAN, which merely mandates opening up interfaces between RAN components (RU, DU-CU, RIC, SMO) itself delivers power efficiency gains. Rather, the gains may lie in the vRAN element, which sees resources pooled and shared. Others dispute there are any such gains, with dedicated radio silicon still offering the best bang per buck compared to hardware-accelerated solutions on commercial servers.
Keating, rather, identifies the efficiencies in terms of the architecture of Boldyn’s deployments.
“Well, Open RAN does do that, the way we do it.The solution is built in a data center, meaning the footprint on the customer site is a lot smaller. It’s faster because it’s in the data center, and it’s more efficient because it’s digital along the whole path right up to the small cell. And don’t forget, you’re closer to the user, using a lot less power.”
Exploring the RIC
Another reason for Open RAN investment is that Keating and Boldyn have been looking at the potential of the RIC to optimise networks, and also to bring in new operational methods.
Boldyn has built its own RIC, and has developed rApps (apps that run on the non-real time version of the RIC) that are now running in production.
“We do things with AI to manage performance, although it’s early day: we’ve had three papers published and there’s another one under way where we’re using reinforcement learning and machine learning to steer traffic or control power, that type of thing.”
The company is also exploring near real time RIC apps, known as xApps, with Bristol University, who have been “amazing”, according to Keating.
Keating said one advantage of the RIC model is being able to move faster than relying on a RAN vendor’s own software feature upgrades. Another advantage is using the automated and AI capabilities of the RIC to change the network operational model itself.
“It’s about reducing the complexity of your organisation, freeing people up to do more interesting work. It’s not ideal to run a next generation network with older generation business practices and organisational complexity,” Keating said.
However, adoption of Open RAN is not without its challenges. Keating is aware that running a multi-vendor network is not going to be the same as working with a single RAN vendor. The company, he says, has three different RU vendors and three DU-CU vendors.
“It’s multi-vendor. There’s different software, payloads and you’re using commercial off the shelf hardware. So what happens is you need a certain level of expertise, you can’t just start to sit back and rely on the vendor to do everything for you, because they won’t understand your environment. You have to have a deep understanding of your own environment, and you work in concert with the Open RAN vendor together. It’s not like a homogeneous end-to-end product, or like a legacy architecture, so you do need that expertise there.”
One learning Boldyn has taken is that it pays to figure out and pre-build solutions in the lab, before shipping to the field.
“We actually started doing this for the offshore wind because it was so far off offshore that you needed to spin up the network in the lab, in the warehouse, make sure it’s working, pack it away and get it shipped offshore.
“We’ve started to do that now with the smaller solutions that we configure.”
