Cisco Spearheads Multi-Vendor Open vRAN Ecosystem Initiative For Mobile Networks
February 25 2018 - 6:00AM
Mobile World Congress — Mobile network
operators are facing strong pressures to evolve their businesses
and operations for profitable growth and differentiation. Explosive
demand for bandwidth persists, while ARPU pressures mount due to
competition and limited service innovation. Addressing these
challenges requires industry innovation focused on delivering new
revenue-generating services based on a more flexible and agile
service delivery environment, while reducing Capex and Opex.
Innovations such as network function virtualization have laid
the groundwork for a new fundamental architecture to emerge. While
many functions of a mobile network are being virtualized, including
the Evolved Packet Core (EPC), IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS), the
Gateway Internet LAN (Gi-LAN) and data transport, the radio access
network represents the final domain for disaggregation and
virtualization. It facilitates a true end-to-end, software-defined
mobile network. An open, standards-based virtualized Radio Access
Network (vRAN) is a key enabler for this new architecture and the
creation of a dynamic multi-vendor ecosystem. Together, they
deliver an economical and flexible platform that satisfies a
variety of use cases and applications.
While there is significant innovation happening in and around
open vRAN today, there are considerable gaps and challenges that
make it difficult to assemble end-to-end solutions, putting heavy
burden back on operators and startups with limited scope. We
believe it is the ideal time to align and collaborate to solve the
key challenges to deliver innovative RAN solutions ready for
commercial deployment.
Today, with more than 30 years of experience building the
largest multi-service, open IP networks in the world, Cisco is
announcing plans to form a multi-vendor ecosystem designed to
address these issues and accelerate the viability and adoption of
Open vRAN solutions.
Cisco is working with ecosystem vendors who have confirmed plans
to join the initiative including Altiostar, Aricent, Intel,
Mavenir, Phazr, Red Hat and Tech Mahindra to spur rapid innovation
in both hardware and software domains. Through this initiative,
Cisco and the other ecosystem parties plan to focus on assembling
viable solutions that build on an open and modular architecture,
drawing from existing industry efforts and that will support a
variety of use cases. The work of this ecosystem will be
customer-driven, leveraging input from top worldwide operators such
as Reliance Jio. Priorities include activities that simplify the
transition to Open vRAN and software-defined mobile networks
including:
- Testing and integration
- Solutions validation
- Transport evolution
- Publishing performance benchmarks
- Running Proof of Concepts (POC)
- Coordinating roadmaps for end-to-end solutions
- Creating and validating network management templates, and
more
“In collaboration with the ecosystem vendors, we aim to make the
Radio Access Network more open and flexible, enabling the
deployment of additional value-add mobile services at the network
edge,” said Tareq Amin, senior vice president,
Technology Development and Automation, Reliance Jio.
“Through this innovation and collaboration we will be able to
deliver a better user experience for our customers.”
“We believe it is an ideal time to align and collaborate
on these issues to deliver innovative solutions ready for
commercial deployment,” said Yvette Kanouff, senior vice
president and general manager, Cisco Service Provider
Business. “Together with the ecosystem parties, we’re
making leaps forward in developing a customer-centric ecosystem
focused on accelerating innovation and enabling new business models
to dramatically lower costs, add capacity and improve network
performance.”
Cisco is leading the disruption in the industry with our
technology innovations in systems, silicon, optics and security,
and our unrivalled expertise in mass-scale networking,
automation, optical, cable access, video, and mobility. Together
with our portfolio of professional services, we
can enable service providers and media and web companies to
reduce cost and complexity, help secure their networks and grow
revenue.
Supporting Resources
- Cisco Service Provider business
- Follow Cisco news and activities at Mobile World Congress 2018
via #CiscoMWC, @CiscoSP360, and by visiting our SP360 blog.
- Follow us on our LinkedIn page for targeted updates and
announcements
- Subscribe to Cisco's SP360 feed
RSS Feed for Cisco:
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/rss.html
About Cisco Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the
worldwide technology leader that has been making the Internet work
since 1984. Our people, products, and partners help society
securely connect and seize tomorrow's digital opportunity today.
Discover more at newsroom.cisco.com and follow us on Twitter at
@Cisco.
PR Contact: Sara Cicero, stutzes@cisco.com,
770-331-0269.
Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024