“If you look at radio prices – milimeter and masimo – the cost is skyrocketing. Operators are wanting to find alternatives; we are asking ourselves ‘how can we bring prices down?’. When I first started working with Mavenir we were partnering with a handful of radio vendors, now we have more than a dozen engaged. If you look at a lot of South Asian and African markets, a lot of these places are still operating on 2G and
3G. For these markets, bringing cost down is a really important factor.” Dilina Crish, Principle Consultant & Solutions Architect for Manevir.
Mavenir’s White Paper entitled “Which Open RAN is best for you?” articulates determining this based on TCO tradeoffs and comparing Opex and Capex in both HTC and LTC cases. This is of particular important for the Indo-Pacific region given the unique challenges and scenarios these nations face in bringing connectivity to their populations. “We are under major pressure by the government and the people to provide more services but building additional telco infrastructure in the Philippines is very hard. We have many islands, and rural areas often do not have access, i.e. roads. All this hinders our ability to provide more connectivity based on the current system in place. Open RAN architecture can pave the way for other more advanced capabilities which are fundamental to scale and optimize networks. This will support faster deployment to the public for new and improved technologies at a lower cost for MNOs and ultimately end-users.” Lennart Olaivar of SMART Communications.