AT&T CEO outlines Open RAN strategy for sustainable network growth
AT&T CEO John Stankey emphasized during a recent earnings call that AT&T’s Open RAN strategy is designed to help it grow its network capacity more sustainably. This approach is needed not only to meet the future demands placed on its network but also to facilitate the transition to the next generations of wireless technologies like 6G.
Responding to concerns raised around lack of available spectrum, Stankey highlighted AT&Ts recent investments but acknowledged scarcity was an issue, especially relative to other parts of the world. Naturally AT&T would like to see the way spectrum is regulated, tweaked, and they see an opportunity for that with potential changes at the FCC brought about by the upcoming US elections.
Spectrum considerations aside, Stankey was confident AT&T has the right assets in place to manage growth in data consumption and network evolution. Key to these endeavours are its fixed assets with Stankey stating: “We think that a good way to pick up high density traffic in places is to do it over fiber, not to do it over wireless”
Indeed AT&T believes future success lies in deploying fiber and wireless assets in a complimentary way to deal with growing demand in a more cost effective way. Open RAN is key to this strategy according to Stankey: “one of the reasons we think that it’s so critical that we open these interfaces up, and we take this step is to play in the next generation of wireless deployment in more distributed radiation points rather than macro sites and they get the benefits of openness in the cost curves and the flexibility.”
And while there’s still no news from AT&T about diversifying its RAN vendors Stankey implied this was on the horizon: “That’s a deliberate aspect of our strategy as to why we’re doing O-RAN the way we’re doing. Why we’re thinking about O-RAN is busting open the smaller cell structure to get more innovation, more providers and how to then layer that on top of the fact that we’re putting denser fiber reaches into our network that allows for us to take advantage of that.”
