DOD Making Big Investment in 5G; Hudson Experts Say ORAN Key to US Leadership

DOD is trying to speed development of 5G technology with “at scale prototyping and experimentation at DOD facilities and throughout the department,” Evans said. Like the growth of 4G, there are applications under 5G that will “generate new industries that we would like to see from an industrial capacity point of view, but also have the department utilize those,” he said. DOD hopes for lower costs of network equipment through open interfaces, he said: “Utilize U.S. software excellence to help drive down costs.”

DOD is also looking closely at 5G security, with an eye on “how we operate over nonsecure networks,” Evans said. “We want to exclude bad actors where possible,” he said: “DOD goes everywhere, anytime, and we need to be able to maintain the ability to use 5G capabilities throughout the world.” DOD is engaged on 5G standard setting and is helping drive innovation, he said.

Evans noted DOD announced 5G tests in October at five U.S. military sites, including tests of dynamic spectrum sharing at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, augmented/virtual reality training at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state and 5G smart warehousing at Naval Base San Diego. Most of the projects have implications for future commercial use as well as military use, he said. “It’s a large investment, $601 million over three years” and the largest such investment anywhere, he said.

ORAN shifts providers from a “fragile telecommunications equipment supply chain” to “a more agile, competitive and robust IT technology” chain, said Cheryl Davis, Oracle senior director-strategic initiatives. 5G isn’t about faster download speeds to smartphones, she said. The standards were written to address the IoT and connecting “billions of things to other things,” she said. “We’re really excited” to see DOD “take such a leadership role here and just start testing out what’s within the realm of the possible,” she said.

Moving to open networks is critical, said Chris Boyer, AT&T vice president-security and technology policy. “We have been concerned for a while around a contraction in our suppliers,” Boyer said. With Huawei excluded from U.S. networks, that leaves only Nokia, Ericsson and, to a lesser extent, Samsung, he said. “Is that a healthy ecosystem?” he asked: “Is that going to lead to the right level of innovation and the right characteristics for a vibrant 5G solution?” ORAN would create a U.S.-based version of the supply chain, he said.

ORAN allows carriers to disaggregate supply, Boyer said. “You can have a radio from one company, potentially hardware from another company,” he said. “You can use software from a third company, or even use open source software, depending on how you want to configure the architecture,” he said. ORAN “opens up a whole range of possibilities,” he said. It “creates a much more vibrant ecosystem” and “lowers barriers to entry.”

“The challenge is a lack of innovation," and vertically integrated companies only slow things, said Steve Papa, CEO of Parallel Wireless, an ORAN company. “They’re only as good as their weakest link,” he said. In 10 years, the cell networks will be “the world's largest supercomputer,” he said: “You’re going to have fiber-optic cable to each of these towers, with more compute on the top of that tower than is in a data center rack today.”

We’re moving “from an analog-heavy wireless world to a digital-heavy wireless world,” Papa said. It’s as big a move as the change from laptops to mobile handsets, he said. Huawei is the world’s biggest supplier of passive antennas for cell networks, he said. “Their costs are less than half of what it would cost for me to get an equivalent device, even when I’m at scale,” he said. “If I try to compete with them against their strengths, I will fail.” Digital technologies even the playing field, he said.