Dish Network, Mavenir and the Open RAN Policy Coalition were among those testifying at a House subcommittee hearing that posed the question: 'What is the future of O-RAN and V-RAN technology?'
Dish, for its part, touts a nationwide 5G network running open RAN software across more than 20,000 cell sites. ... The House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, part of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, is scheduled to hold a hearing on open RAN on Wednesday.Specifically, she said the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and the Development Finance Corporation (DFC) should have the ability to "waive certain statutory financial risk restrictions" when they're considering open RAN projects. "It would provide a market-based mechanism to help level the playing field and allow trusted suppliers to compete, win bids and advance US interests," she said. That's a nod to claims that Huawei and other Chinese vendors sell equipment at an unfair discount thanks to backing from the Chinese government. ... The House hearing is focusing on a relatively narrow set of niche technologies that typically would only interest networking engineers."Open RAN architectures aim to provide a more modular and flexible approach, making it easy for operators to replace or upgrade individual components or even suppliers, while increasing competition in the market," explained John Baker, a top executive with open RAN vendor Mavenir, in testimony to a House subcommittee.However, Baker warned, there can be different flavors of open RAN. "Just as open RAN has been embraced by nearly all within the industry, we risk repeating history by having suppliers again lock up networks with proprietary solutions that are only partially based on O-RAN Alliance specifications," he explained.