VMware announced plans to roll a RIC, the radio access network (RAN) intelligent controller, into its Telco Cloud Platform to further abstract RAN infrastructure and allow operators to program the RAN via xApps.
VMware RIC pulls specifications from the O-RAN Alliance. It includes a centralised RIC for non-real-time RIC for functions that don’t require latency response greater than one second and a distributed RIC for near-real-time RIC that can manage and host xApps that require latency timing in the tens of milliseconds.
The RIC and associated xApps are gaining interest among communities supporting the development of open RAN, including the Open Networking Foundation’s SD-RAN project. xApps allow operators to design and control the most important RAN functions, providing administrative RAN sovereignty over functions that are typically implemented as proprietary features on base stations.
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RAN infrastructure is of particular importance to VMware, which earlier this year released its Telco Cloud Platform RAN for virtualised and containerised RAN functions.
“We believe that we will always be in the RAN,” but VMware’s core strategy is to provide a broader and “common software stack” for modern telco infrastructure, Sanjay Uppal, SVP and GM of VMware’s Service Provider and Edge Business Unit, said in a recent phone interview.
“Our role in the underlay is to be both in the core as well as in the access part, which is the RAN as well as the fibre. And our role there is, in a disaggregated system, to provide the software stack on which the workloads will run,” he said.
Nokia this month claimed to be the first network equipment supplier to certify all 5G core network functions on the VMware Telco Cloud Platform.
