Cohere Technologies and Mavenir have collaborated to accelerate the transition from proprietary RANs to a Multi-generational Open RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) solution. The partnership is another example of the industry OEMs jockeying to dominate the RIC market.
Mavenir’s O-RIC offers Network Intelligence as a Service that provides insights about the network enabling solutions. Mavenir’s O-RIC enables the creation of differentiated services through open APIs. Cohere, based in San Jose, has developed Spectrum Multiplier software for Open RAN and existing 4G and 5G mobile networks, as well as its Orthogonal Time Frequency Space wireless system.
As part of the Open RAN disaggregation strategy, a RIC brings multi-vendor interoperability, intelligence, agility, and programmability to the RAN, according to 5GWorldPro. RICs reduce RAN operating costs by automatically configuring base stations and optimizing radio parameters, using artificial intelligence.
There has been other action recently in RICs. NEC Corporation demonstrated multi-vendor integration and interoperability of a Near-Real-Time RIC at O-RAN ALLIANCE Global PlugFest. Last November, Rakuten Symphony, Inc. announced that Rakuten’s Symworld™ Platform would be embedded with Juniper’s RIC. In September, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and KDDI completed a 5G end-to-end network slicing demonstration with a RIC in Tokyo.
SNS Telecom & IT estimates that global spending on RIC platforms will reach $120 Million in 2023 as initial implementations move from field trials to production-grade deployments. With commercial maturity, the submarket is further expected to quintuple to nearly $600 Million by the end of 2025.
Joe Madden, Principal Analyst at Mobile Experts, counts around a dozen RICs in the marketplace, and he said consolidation is inevitable. “It’s impossible for an app developer to support so many different versions of their application,” he said.
Madden likens the RIC market to the operating systems used by cell phones, which consolidated down to IOS and Android, although he does not envision it reducing to only two RICs. Private enterprises may drive the consolidation of the RICs, as the Private 5G market begins to use the Open RAN architecture.
“Private enterprises will prefer one RIC or another because of the applications that are available on the preferred RIC,” Madden said. “As one of the RICs gains mass and gets bigger than the others, it’ll start to become the preferred solution.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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