Summer Myatt
The United States is increasingly reliant on wireless communications technology as it becomes more prevalent. But the radio access networks, or RAN, that power wireless technologies have historically been built and deployed by companies outside of the U.S. Now, the U.S. is working to shift the paradigm and bring telecommunications leadership back home.
Executive Mosaic spoke with JMA Wireless Senior Vice President and General Manager Rishi Bhaskar in an exclusive video interview to gain a deeper understanding of RAN and Open-RAN technology and the role it plays in broader 5G innovation efforts across the public sector.
Bhaskar explained RAN technology as a multi-layered network with compute, process and radio frequency capabilities to which our cell phones connect. But RAN has traditionally been provided by foreign companies and closed off to the broader ecosystem of technology providers, which posed a problem to the U.S. federal government.
“The challenge that the U.S. government recognized several years ago is none of those companies were based here in the U.S. And because of the prevalence of wireless technology and our reliance on wireless technology, it became really evident that we had a national security risk, which was then magnified by the fact that in the pandemic, we had a massive supply chain risk because we were sourcing this technology from all over the world,” Bhaskar shared.
This is where Open-RAN, or O-RAN, comes into play.
“O-RAN allows multiple vendors and multiple suppliers to actually develop at different layers of that full stack,” explained Bhaskar. “The specifications that are emerging from O-RAN will allow all those different layers from different suppliers to interoperate, to become a scalable, reliable RAN solution. It diversifies our technology base, it spurs innovation and it brings U.S. telecom leadership to the forefront where it should be.”
Bhaskar shared that this more diversified and open RAN ecosystem will be critical to the modernization of communications in the U.S. and it will bring more innovative technology to areas like warehousing, logistics and contested logistics, which have become a main concern in recent years.
Hear Rishi Bhaskar break down the importance of O-RAN and why it’s so important to the Department of Defense in this moment — watch his full video interview here.
