The ardent debates around open RAN have obscured the reality that many of the biggest proponents of the new architecture are in the developing world.

Robert Clark, Contributing Editor, Special to Light Reading

June 18, 2021

3 Min Read
Open RAN a lifeline for emerging market telcos

The ardent debates around open RAN have obscured the reality that many of the biggest proponents of the new architecture are in the developing world.

Telecom Infra Projects (TIP) data shows that most of the open RAN projects around the world are in emerging markets, with telcos such as Airtel, China Mobile, Vodacom, Telkomsel and Telefónica all either trialing or deploying O-RAN solutions.

So it is instructive to see how a small developing economy telco approaches the concept.

Figure 1: Opening up rural areas: Open RAN could be a lifeline for remote and hard-to-reach regions in emerging markets like Indonesia. (Source: Shayan Ghiasvand on Unsplash) Opening up rural areas: Open RAN could be a lifeline for remote and hard-to-reach regions in emerging markets like Indonesia.
(Source: Shayan Ghiasvand on Unsplash)

A friend in open RAN

Navdeep Sharma, vice president, technology planning at Indonesia's Smartfren, says the operator believes O-RAN can help it achieve its targets of affordably connecting remote villages and supporting the national industry modernization program.

Smartfren is the smallest in the large but oversupplied Indonesian market. It has around 30 million subscribers, which is less than 10% of the market, and its lack of financial scale means it also struggles to compete on network scale.

It has taken note of the O-RAN calculations made by other operators, Sharma says. For example, Rakuten estimates it can save 40% on opex and 30% on capex, while China Mobile thinks it can take out more than half of opex.

But every service provider has its own distinctive requirements, so Smartfren has just issued an RFP to work through the potential O-RAN benefits.

Speaking at Light Reading's Asia Tech Digital Symposium on Thursday, Sharma said like other operators the company needed to increase its yield per bit of traffic and to meet rising customer experience expectations.

But it also needed to aid in the national effort to improve remote connectivity across the archipelago of 6,000 inhabited islands. Around 12,500 of Indonesia's 83,000 villages have no Internet access.

Remote control

The challenge is the disparity in requirements in different geographies – huge capacity and throughput in Jakarta, basic coverage and minimal capacity in the villages.

"With open RAN we can work out under different designs and architectures and optimize capex and opex."

Smartfren believes the open RAN topology can give greater flexibility and improved ROI, enabling it to extend to more villages.

Want to know more about open RAN? Check out our dedicated open RAN channel here on Light Reading.

It should be able to connect a single rural site through microwave backhaul and, by combining some elements, eliminate the eNode B.

Smartfren's other task is to support the Indonesian government's industry 4.0 plan, which targets key sectors such as autos and food production.

As well as providing high-speed and low-latency connectivity, it believes the open 5G supply chain can foster domestic ecosystems among hardware and software suppliers and integrators.

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— Robert Clark, contributing editor, special to Light Reading

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Asia

About the Author(s)

Robert Clark

Contributing Editor, Special to Light Reading

Robert Clark is an independent technology editor and researcher based in Hong Kong. In addition to contributing to Light Reading, he also has his own blog,  Electric Speech (http://www.electricspeech.com). 

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