Raghunath Hariharan is CTO, Rakuten Symphony. In this revealing interview with TMN editor Keith Dyer he explains how the efforts to disaggregate mobile networks almost went too far, and describes the need for an intermediate approach that provides a level of pre-integration, while remaining open.
He also recognises that Open RAN has been a gradual process, and not an explosion, something he puts down in part to O-RAN parameters not being mandatory, allowing companies to fragment implementation.
But he is positive also. Rakuten Symphony has integrated with 10 different Radio Unit vendors with more to come, and with a minimum viable set of standards now established, he is confident that we will now see more progress in the industry.
Rakuten Symphony itself has had to change, and has successfully migrated its Open RAN business to a licensing model, which will enable it to open up enterprise and private networks opportunities via its licensee partners.
From human to machine-centric, deterministic networks
And then there is what comes next. And here he has a “very strong opinion” – which is that the next phase of mobile networks will move from being human-centric to being machine-centric, with deterministic latency and throughput. That can’t happen, of course, without the open, cloud-native and software-defined network. And here, the “biggest piece of the puzzle is in the RAN”.
