Mavenir looks to partners in open RAN drive

INTERVIEW: Puneet Sethi, Mavenir SVP and GM, Open RAN Systems Business Group, sees a growing number of players entering the open RAN space, and believes many of them can become Mavenir’s partners.

“We see an increase in the number of partners, the number of radios we need to integrate with,” Sethi told Mobile World Live.

Mavenir is working with HCL Global Systems, a consulting and systems integration firm, to integrate third-party radios with Mavenir Centralised Units (CUs) and Distributed Units (DUs).

“This will accelerate the speed at which the radios can be validated against an O-RAN 7.2 interface,” Sethi said. The O-RAN 7.2 interface is the O-RAN Alliance’s specification for the functional split between the Radio Units and Distributed Units.

Sethi also foresees new software partners adding value to the open RAN ecosystem, and predicts open interfaces will enable increasing specialisation among network software providers. Since open RAN creates choice for operators, all vendors need to remain nimble, he said.

“We’ve got to keep pushing our barriers in the CU/DU space and we want to work with the partners that are doing the same in their product categories,” Sethi explained.

Some of these partners specialise in automation, a technology Sethi predicts will be essential for operators as they leverage open interfaces to push new software into live networks.

“There is a lot of intelligence that’s built into the automation tools,” Sethi explained. “We are working with partners in that space, and we are making our contributions as well.”