Ericsson & AT&T Collaborate On New SMO Integrations
Ericsson has announced the successful integration of CommScope’s OneCell Radio solution and Corning’s 5G Enterprise RAN (received via its 2017 acquisition of SpiderCloud), with its Intelligent Automation Platform (EIAP), the company’s version of the SMO. The integration was achieved in partnership with AT&T, who last year signed a $14 billion, five-year agreement with the Swedish manufacturer to transition 70% of its traffic onto Open RAN networks. The move highlights some of Open RAN’s key benefits including facilitating multi-vendor environments, reducing costs, leveraging a wider pool of network management applications like rApps, and the “test once deploy many times” concept.
Indeed, by integrating solutions from different vendors into an SMO like EIAP, and bringing all connections into one single system (the so-called single pane of glass), operators can simplify their network operations and reduce costs as a result. It also makes it easier for operators to pick and mix the most appropriate solutions to specific deployment scenarios.
Commenting on the news, Rob Soni, VP RAN Technology at AT&T said that “This is a significant move towards unifying network management in a single, open framework. We believe this will spark even more innovation in the applications we use to manage our network.”
In this case, both CommScope’s and Corning’s enterprise focused offerings will now be available to all of Ericsson’s EIAP customers as plug and play solutions. And, although the announcement specifies that AT&T will be the first operator to be able to take advantage of this new functionality, it’s unclear as yet if or when CommScope and Corning will join Fujitsu and Mavenir as third party vendors in the US operator’s network.
It will be interesting to see if the addition of these solutions to Ericsson’s EIAP will help grow the number of enterprise focused rApps delivered through the platform. rApps allow operators to manage their networks in a more efficient and granular way and this can unlock significant value for operators by enabling enhanced, enterprise focused services, like private networks, network slicing, intelligent traffic steering, and improved security.
An important Open RAN innovation AT&T won’t be able to tap into at this stage however is the xApp, since Ericsson’s SMO doesn’t support the necessary O-RAN ALLIANCE interfaces at this stage.
