Biden pushes open RAN agenda with India's Modi

US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced this week that they "share a vision of creating secure and trusted telecommunications, resilient supply chains, and enabling global digital inclusion."

Specifically, they agreed to work together to develop new 5G and 6G networks alongside open RAN technologies.

"President Biden and Prime Minister Modi also stressed the need to put in place a 'Trusted Network/Trusted Sources' bilateral framework," according to a lengthy release from the Biden administration on the work.

The announcement is part of a much broader effort by the Biden administration to tie Modi and India more closely into a Western alliance of global geopolitical heavyweights.

But in the telecommunications industry, it's also somewhat noteworthy as companies around the globe work to access the opportunities in open RAN and – eventually – the possibility of a wave of 6G network upgrades.

A geopolitical dance

As noted by The New York Times, India is important because it is a major global superpower and because it has not yet fully chosen a side in what Biden calls the struggle between democracy and autocracy. That struggle has increasingly pitted the US and its allies against China and its allies. India – a country with 1.4 billion people – is clearly one of the biggest swing factors.

In telecommunications, the Biden administration continues to push an agenda initially outlined during the Trump administration that calls for open RAN technology to act as a bulwark against the meteoric rise of Chinese equipment suppliers like ZTE and Huawei. However, open RAN remains a relatively minor part of the global 5G industry as operators in the US, India and elsewhere continue to pursue major network upgrades using traditional, classical RAN equipment.

It remains to be seen whether Biden's announcement with Modi will help change that calculus. But the countries have already shown some progress in their partnership: For example, US-based Micron Technology plans to invest $2.7 billion to set up a chip assembly testing and packaging unit in Sanand in the state of Gujarat in Western India.

So far, though, no major US or Indian operator has made any substantial investments into open RAN directly.

That may change as the global 5G industry matures and begins to consider a possible 6G upgrade. According to the new Biden-Modi announcement, India's Bharat 6G Alliance and the US Next G Alliance will cooperate on the development of a next-generation standard.

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— Mike Dano, Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies, Light Reading | @mikeddano