T-Mobile: Not an All or Nothing When It Comes to vRAN

AUSTIN, TEXAS — Virtualizing the RAN (vRAN) is an important step for mobile operators, and some are pursuing it more aggressively than others. However, with the flexible nature of the 5G network, it’s possible that mobile operators could combine vRAN with traditional RAN in their networks. At the 5G North America event today, Karri Kouppamaki, vice president of radio network technology development and strategy for T-Mobile, said that T-Mobile is moving toward a vRAN architecture but that the 5G network doesn’t have to be uniform. For example, he said that operators could use vRAN for some types of use cases and traditional RAN for others. “We need to think about 5G networks differently,” he said. “We may find out that in certain use cases we do things differently. vRAN plays a role in that.” T-Mobile hasn’t been very vocal about its plans to virtualize the RAN. At Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona, Spain, last February, T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray said that he thought virtualizing the RAN was a lofty goal and added that operators need to support the vendor community. Meanwhile, AT&T and Verizon are both members of the ORAN Alliance, which was created by the joining of the xRAN Forum with the C-RAN Alliance. That group’s goal is to virtualize the RAN. And Verizon has also said that it is working with Intel and Nokia to develop a vRAN architecture. At today’s event, Verizon Chief Network Officer Nicki Palmer said Verizon believes that architecturally, the whole network will eventually become software-enabled and that vRAN is a long-term goal for the company.