Open RAN will achieve mainstream adoption when the new ecosystem becomes able to offer the same natural efficiency that the oligarch vendors provided in their "goods out" full-system validation. The real challenge is how to achieve this without an erosion of cost advantages through supply chain margin-stacking.

1. Open RAN Revolution:
You say you want disaggregation, well you know, we all want to change the world!
Andy Jones
jonesthefone consulting

2. Open RAN Manifesto
• Decouple hardw are and softw are
• Democratize innovation
• Diversify the supply chain
• Disrupt the duopoly in the West
• De-risk “risky” vendors from the East
• Disaggregation Rules OK!

3. However…
Disaggregation may not achieve TRL 10
Definition of TRL 10*:
“Use of the technology in a recurrent manner as
part of a tested, validated and use-certified
system with characterized and acceptable levels
of unplanned troubleshooting and repair required.
This TRL includes upgrades and refinements to
improve the functionality of the operating system,
repair latent defects and reduce troubleshooting
and repair requirements. “
* “In search of technology readiness level (TRL) 10”
Jeremy Straub, Department of Computer Science,
University of North Dakota
Aerospace Science and Technology
Volume 46, October–November 2015, Pages 312-320

4. TIP and O-RAN stops at TRL-9
Andy Dunkin, Vodafone Group, May 2021

5. Disaggregation undermines traditional
supply chain efficiencies
• Major incumbent vendors have >100 years of system engineering experien
• They are masters in the art of System Release Management
• Full RAN system is validated once at “goods out” for every major release
• Both functionality and performance are validated
1919 1939 1969

6. The Solution?:
Open RAN System Release Validation as a Service ( SRVaaS)
• Restores the natural efficiency of “Test Once, Deploy Many Times”
• Continues beyond TRL 9 into CI/CD Lifecycle Management

7. Does the OpenRAN Business Case stack up?
Source: Parallel Wireless

8. Does the OpenRAN Business Case stack up?
Source: Parallel Wireless

9. Does the OpenRAN Business Case stack up?
Source: Parallel Wireless

10. Does the OpenRAN Business Case stack up?
Source: Parallel Wireless
Looks OK. Gives Operator full control. But
Operators not used to bearing liability
and economies of scale are limited

11. Does the OpenRAN Business Case stack up?
Source: Parallel Wireless
Looks good. But how many vendors will
want to prime and take on the 3rd party
liabilities across so many accounts?

12. Does the OpenRAN Business Case stack up?
Source: Parallel Wireless
“margin stacking”
Traditional SI model perceived as eroding the Open RAN business case due to

13. Does the OpenRAN Business Case stack up?
Source: Parallel Wireless
• Economies of scale
• “Test Once/Deploy Many”
• Avoids “Margin Stacking”
“SI model employing SRVaaS perceived to be the cost-efficient option.

14. Andy Jones
Jonesthefone Consulting Limited
Andy established Jonesthefone Consulting 10 years
ago and has served more than 50 clients, providing
advisory, consulting and business development
services in telecom networking infrastructure.
Currently Andy is working on 5G, Edge Computing
and OpenRAN. Andy has served as an advisor to
the Telecom Infra Project, working closely with
Facebook’s Connectivity Team and TIP’s
membership to accelerate innovation and market
adoption.
Prior to founding Jonesthefone Consulting, Andy
had 20 years of experience leading network strategy
& architecture at Vodafone. He is a Fellow of the
IET and serves on the Advisory Boards of several
start-up and scale-up companies.