Google joins O-RAN Alliance to help make AI-powered 5G networks a reality

Google LLC today announced that it’s joining the O-RAN Alliance, a consortium of carriers and tech firms working to make the world’s telecommunications infrastructure more efficient.

A telecommunications network has multiple elements. One of them is the so-called RAN, or radio access network, an industry term that refers to the cell towers through which a carrier provides internet coverage to subscribers. The O-RAN Alliance is looking to enhance carriers’ cell towers using technologies such as artificial intelligence.

A cell tower comprises numerous individual subcomponents: antennas, servers that process the signals passing through the antennas, software responsible for managing the workflow and countless auxiliary systems. Historically, carriers would buy most of these components from a single supplier. Combining software from one supplier with antennas or servers made by another firm often often wasn’t possible, which limited carriers’ options.

The O-RAN Alliance aims to change that. The consortium is developing a specification that would enable cell tower subsystems made by different suppliers to interoperate with each other. In other words, if the consortium’s specification gains widespread adoption, combining cell tower software from one supplier with the servers of another would become possible. 

The reason the effort has caught Google’s interest is because the subcomponent interoperability the O-RAN Alliance is striving to realize could open the door to an entirely new way of running carrier networks. That, in turn, would create new revenue opportunities for the search and cloud giant. 

If a carrier no longer has to buy servers from a specific supplier as a prerequisite to running that supplier’s cell tower software, it can swap the servers for off-the-shelf machines that cost a fraction of the price. Moreover, without hardware-related compatibility constraints, carriers would gain the ability to mix and match software from different providers. 

If carriers gain the ability to run effectively any application that’s compatible with the O-RAN specification on their cell towers, companies such as Google can sell them software to help them manage their networks. One goal of the O-RAN Alliance is enabling carriers to install artificial intelligence software to help optimize connections for users. Another objective is making it possible to use virtualization software to effectively divide a cell tower into multiple virtual cell towers, which could then be shared by multiple different carriers.

Google is targeting this nascent market with its Anthos for Telecom platform. The platform is meant to function as a kind of operating system for carrier applications, much like Google’s Android is an operating system for running mobile apps. The O-RAN Alliance standard could potentially make it easier and more practical for carriers to deploy Anthos for Telcom, thereby expanding Google’s sales opportunities.

Joining the O-RAN Alliance will enable Google to both support the development of the specification and advance its industry adoption. The search giant shared a few details about its plans in the announcement of the move today.

To start, Google plans to work with the O-RAN Alliance to realize the consortium’s goal of applying AI software in cell towers. “Our vision is to work with the O-RAN Alliance to enable cloud-native intelligent networks that are secure, self-driving, and self-healing — bringing Google’s wealth of software experience and global leadership in the areas of machine learning, massive data processing, and geospatial analytics,” Google Cloud executives Amol Phadke and Ankur Jain wrote in a blog post today.

Analytics and automation will be another priority. “Over the coming years, we believe this journey will accelerate with the shift to cloud-native networking across the board, bringing in end-to-end multi-domain automation and rich analytics,” Phadke and Jain wrote. “We’re bringing Google’s experience in building our own scaled global network to drive greater innovation and accelerate O-RAN initiatives in this space.”

Google’s work with some of its carrier customers may provide a clue as to what analytics and automation features the company envisions. In May, the search giant announced a broad cloud computing deal with Vodafone Group PLC. As part of the project, Google will help the carrier build a cloud-based analytics and automation system that can identify technical issues in its network before they affect customers, as well as fix them automatically in some cases using machine learning.

Though the O-RAN Alliance already has more than 200 members, Google’s decision to sign up marks a major milestone for the group. Google operates one of the world’s most sophisticated networks, complete with an extensive array of subsea internet cables that it designed partly in-house. The company is even working with SpaceX Corp. to link its network to the StarLink constellation of low-Earth orbit internet satellites. The considerable networking know-how that the search giant bring to the table could be a major boon for the O-RAN Alliance.

Perhaps equally notable is that Google has a strong track record in driving industry adoption of new open-source technologies. “From programming languages like Go, to the Android mobile operating system that provides the foundation of billions of mobile devices across the world, to Kubernetes, which has become the default choice for container orchestration across the industry, Google has a long history of software innovation,” Phadke and Jain pointed out. 

Gaining sufficient adoption among carriers and network suppliers will be essential for the O-RAN Alliance’s interoperability standard to succeed, which makes Google’s decision to join all the more significant. 

Photo:  Google