Telus has said that parts of its network will be controlled by the Open RAN element known as a RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), with deployment scheduled from early 2026 following extensive lab testing though this year. The operator will initially start deploying RIC applications, which are fed by data from the radio layer in order to perform automated optimisations, within one chosen target market before extending the RIC capability over more of its network through the year.
The RIC will be supplied by Samsung. Samsung is Telus’ chosen RAN supplier, initially for a traditional RAN replacement of Huawei equipment, and then subsequently for a vRAN rollout based on Open RAN specifications. It is also supplying Telus with its Service Management & Orchestration platform, which it calls CognitiV Network Operations Suite, which works with the RIC to control the RAN layer. But Bernard Bureau, Vice President of Wireless Strategy and 5G Services at TELUS, said that it wasn’t an open and shut case that Samsung would also supply the RIC element. Verizon, a large Samsung Open RAN customer, has used a RIC platform from Qualcomm as it transitions over from the C-SON platform provided by Qualcomm acquisition Cellwize. That Qualcomm RIC has supported rApps from Samsung.
“There were other viable choices out there, for sure,” Bureau said, “but what ultimately convinced us is the level of collaboration that we’ve had with Samsung Networks over the last few years, and the fact that I don’t think you can just take a platform, take certain rApps and plug and play. There needs to be a super-high level of collaboration between the supplier and us as a customer. Riding on the great collaboration that we’ve had in the previous years was ultimately what convinced us to go with Samsung.”
Although the RIC is defined by its support for Open RAN interfaces, Bureau said that the platform would be able to support both the Samsung Open vRAN elements in its network as well as the traditional Samsung RAN Telus operates.
The Non Real Time RIC will replace a Centralised-SON (Self Optimising Network) platform that Telus has been using, and will give Telus the ability to customise the automations it needs within the network specific to its own needs, Bureau said. He added that it will make implementation of new use cases easier.
“We’ve been using a Centralised SON platform for a while, and we are satisfied with what we’ve been able to achieve, but the RIC is really going to let us go up a couple of gears and leverage more AI capabilities. The open interface is a big, big deal. Having the ability to do third party rApps is also a big deal, plus the ability to do some of it ourselves.”
“Our network is unique. We are in a network sharing arrangement with another operator in Canada and as a result we have a very high number of channels: we have nine bands of LTE and four bands of NR in our in our sites so the complexity of our network is really high. So there are some use cases that are probably going to be unique to us and this is where having the ability to do some of that stuff ourselves is very important to us,”
Bureau said the operator has identified around 20 rApps (the name for the type of apps that are deployed on a non real time RIC) that it will deploy in 2026, with a further 20 apps live during 2027. The apps themselves will be a mix of Samsung’s own use cases, ones developed by third parties and by Telus itself.
Stephen Wiktorski, VP and Head of Samsung Networks Canada, said, “This implementation at Telus embodies everything that Open RAN was supposed to be. It is multi-vendor in every aspect, and that comes down to the RIC as well. The platform is built in such a way that we are absolutely open to having third party vendors come in and work with us, or indeed Telusthemselves, to build rApps. Obviously, there will be some that we’ll build, and we hope to convince Telus to deploy them, especially ones that are very specific to the RAN performance. But there is lots of other opportunity for many vendors to come in and do their do what they do best in the network.”
Wiktorski added that other Canadian operators are showing interest in the RIC as a means to manage the transition from their current traditional networks to vRAN, and are looking to make the move to the RIC “sooner rather than later.”
“Because the RIC platform that we have supports both traditional RAN and vRAN, they’re very interested in putting the RIC in sooner rather than later. They won’t be able to harness some of the AI RAN stuff that Bernard will be able to harness by 2027 or so, because they just won’t have to compute in the field. But that being said, there’s a lot of key applications that they will be able to harness out of the data centers that they have.”
AI in the network, for the network
The Non Real Time RIC is an element that sits in the network with access to a large amount of RAN data. It is sometimes incorporated into the AI-RAN vision, which posits the use of compute capacity within the RAN to run AI workloads, including those that can help optimise the network.
Certainly Samsung was keen to position the deployment as an integration of AI into the RAN, and a step forward in its vision for the AI-powered RAN, which it discussed in a blog post and accompanying white paper last week. It called the Telus deployment “a significant milestone toward fully software-based, AI-powered networks.”
Bureau said that the RIC is a “big part” of how the operator can extract more out of its existing data assets. But, he added, “there are some pretty interesting use cases to run within the base station as well. And you know, we’re looking forward to advancements on that end.”
That said, he added that the operator was keeping only a watching brief on the development of the near real time RIC and the xApps that run upon it. “We’re not seeing this [xApp] ecosystem really developing meaningfully at the moment. And I think there’s so much to be done on the non real time RIC that this is our primary focus for the time being. We will see how the how the ecosystem develops in 2026, 2027, and will react accordingly.”
Bureau said that one of the advantages of adopting a vRAN platform is that it gives operators the compute platform in the network – and as processor improvements are realised over the next 3-4 years, the single server at the site will have too much capacity just to run RAN.
“If you look at 2027-2028, probably we’re going to have choices to make with regards to CPU capability, or whatever processing unit you want to use, because a single server is going to be able to do way more than what the RAN needs. What do you do with that processing power? We don’t have a definitive plan at the moment on that, but you can really see that the server or compute capabilities are going to exceed whatever the RAN needs are in the not so distant future. So we’ll need to decide whether we go with a server that is just for our needs, or if we leverage that space and power for something else.”
Open RAN Update:
Bureau said that at the moment, about 15% of Samsung’s outdoor macro sites are Open RAN compatible, with every Open RAN site featuring a combination of Samsung and Amplitech antennas. Of the five radios per sector, Amplitech is providing two FDD mid-band radios. Samsung provides two FDD low band radios, and a massive-limo C-Band panel.
Bureau said, “That’s our current mix. And it’s really important for us to have that deployment: if it [multi-vendor Open RAN] remains theoretical. It’s not good enough for us.”
