Japan to support telecom infrastructure in South Pacific using Open RAN technology
Japan’s government and private sector will offer support for telecommunications infrastructure in Pacific island countries, starting with a data center and telecom project in Palau, in an effort to improve the security of vital networks connecting Asia and North America. The initiative will be led by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and is expected to include telecom company NTT Group, internet service provider Internet Initiative Japan and other companies. It aims to increase Japan’s participation in the South Pacific, a region crisscrossed with undersea communications cables linking East Asia, the U.S., Australia and Southeast Asia. Funding will come from the ministry’s international cooperation budget. Several billion yen (1 billion yen equals $7.1 million) in public-private investment is expected to be mobilized over the first two years.
The infrastructure improvements will use Open Radio Access network (RAN) technology, which Japan has sought to promote as a low-cost way of building wireless networks from components made by different manufacturers.
Japan, the U.S., and Australia — which, along with India, make up the security dialogue known as the Quad — all support improving communications security in Pacific island countries. These island countries are reliant on equipment from Chinese telecom company Huawei Technologies for their land-based networks. The U.S. and others say Huawei has ties to the Chinese military and poses a security risk. Western officials have raised concerns about the potential for eavesdropping on communications and other activities. Huawei denies such accusations.
Quad members have agreed to support the modernization of Palau’s telecommunications infrastructure. Japan’s communications ministry will start putting this initiative to work as early as fiscal 2025, which begins in April. It will then seek to expand aid in fiscal 2026 to other countries in the region. Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands — two of the dwindling number of countries to maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan — are likely to be candidates for such support. The effort will also seek to train cybersecurity personnel. Island countries with understaffed cybersecurity capabilities are seen as a potential vulnerability that can be exploited to launch attacks against Japan, experts say.
Tuvalu-an island country roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii-is expected to be a candidate to receive Japanese support for telecommunications infrastructure. © Reuters
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China has worked to extend its influence in the South Pacific. In recent years, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Nauru have all cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favor of relations with Beijing. The Solomon Islands also formed a security agreement with China. Including Palau, only three countries in the region still maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Telecommunications infrastructure is becoming increasingly important for island countries in their own right.
“A stable network connecting a country with the rest of the world is essential for receiving remittances from migrant workers. Better telecommunications infrastructure is of great significance in improving ties between countries,” said Motohiro Tsuchiya, a professor at the Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance in Japan.
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References:
https://market.us/report/open-ran-market/
https://www.o-ran.org/otics/japan-otic
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/japan-s-5g-ambitions-quad
NTT advert in WSJ: Why O-RAN Will Change Everything; AT&T selects Ericsson for its O-RAN
NTT DOCOMO OREX brand offers a pre-integrated solution for Open RAN
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“No, open RAN is not dead at all,” said Tommi Uitto, the president of Nokia’s mobile networks business group, during a press conference at the Finnish company’s futuristic new research and development campus in Oulu earlier this month. “I want to say that we are fully committed to open RAN. We are fully committed to cloud RAN. There are more than Ericsson and Nokia.”
Hardly any entirely new builds, dubbed “greenfield” networks, have materialized since the birth of the O-RAN Alliance. And the biggest, owned by Echostar in the US, is to be decommissioned following the company’s multibillion-dollar sale of spectrum licenses to AT&T and SpaceX. Echostar’s move is a huge blow to Mavenir and other open RAN suppliers involved in the rollout.
The bigger problem has been the apparent lack of interest among the world’s incumbent “brownfield” operators. Nearly all have stuck with traditional vendors including Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia. Last year, data from Omdia (a Light Reading sister company) showed the RAN market share of those three companies had grown from 75.1% in 2023 to 77.4%. The world’s largest open RAN deployment by a brownfield operator is AT&T’s in the US – and it is controversial. While AT&T claims to be using products compliant with O-RAN Alliance specifications, almost all of them are provided by Ericsson.
Omdia gave Samsung a 4.8% share of the RAN market last year, making it the world’s fifth-biggest vendor by sales, behind Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and ZTE.
Japan’s NEC and Fujitsu, the only other companies tracked by Omdia, had shares of 0.9% and 0.5% respectively.
In April, Fujitsu span off its network assets into a new business called 1FINITY and predicted that network sales would fall 17% in the current fiscal year. NEC warned in July that revenues at its telecom services unit would fall 12.6% in the current quarter and that its operating profit would drop 31%.
Both have endured the harsh RAN conditions under the protective wings of huge electronics companies generating tens of billions of dollars in annual revenues. Startups and much smaller organizations like Mavenir have not had that luxury and are not even regarded today as viable contenders by some of the biggest telcos.
“Small vendors of the ecosystem will have a role to play, but more in indoor areas and maybe some neutral host situations,” said Laurent Leboucher, the group chief technology officer of France’s Orange, at this year’s MWC Barcelona. “The really big open competition to replace and transform the existing mobile network is still with just a few players.”
https://www.lightreading.com/open-ran/nokia-mobile-boss-says-open-ran-is-not-dead-amid-duopoly-fears