As Prime Minister Narendra Modi negotiates business deals during his visit to the US, a significant portion of the conversations will centre on telecom, reliable sources, and technology exchange between the two nations, particularly when it comes to the creation of Open Radio Access Networks (ORAN) solutions that seek to undermine the dominance of Chinese and some European companies in the field of developing 4G, 5G, and 6G technology.

In order to develop sophisticated, interconnected networks, several stakeholders pool their resources under the ORAN model, which is how India is progressively approaching telecom technologies.

What is ORAN?

ORAN is meant to allow hardware and software used in cellular networks to inter-operate, irrespective of the vendor. RAN has traditionally been a proprietary or closed segment of the network. ORAN approach is being attempted in several geographies and can help countries such as India and the US to forge an alliance to jointly develop multi-vendor next-gen telecom solutions with companies from both sides benefiting. The ambition is to create solutions that allow for the separation of hardware and software with open interfaces and virtualization, hosting the complex software that controls and updates networks in the cloud.

India-US on ORAN, and iCET discussions between the NSAs

There have already been discussions around ORAN during high-level meetings between India and the US, such as those during the recent conversations between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his American counterpart Jake Sullivan. It has also been a part of the discussions at the level of Quad, where the effort is to break the Chinese monopoly, especially when national security and cyber threats are proving to be real dangers for countries across the world.
Several American telecom and IT companies, such as Cisco, are looking to partner Indian companies in the development and rollout of 4G, and 5G solutions while working on 6G development. This also figures on the list of priorities being attempted through the Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) between India and the US, launched in January. The iCET’s focus is on driving enhanced cooperation between private industries as well as research and scientific institutions in the US and India in next-gen technologies such as AI, telecom, ORAN, space, quantum computing and semiconductors.

Early success for India in ORAN and development of indigenous telecom stack

India has managed to register some early gains in ORAN by developing indigenous solutions for 4G and 5G through a local consortium formed between Tata Group’s TCS and Tejas, which teamed up with C-DoT for upgrading BSNL and MTNL networks. While TCS is the system integrator for the entire telecom network, Tejas will churn out equipment and RAN, with CDoT developing the core.
Work on India’s own telecom stack – which aims to take on the likes of Huawei, ZTE, Nokia and Ericsson – is still at an early stage. The government believes that India’s “cost-effective and secure solutions” will attractive to emerging economies, as well as large and friendly countries such as the US.

Modi promotes Indian technology and IT products in the US

PM Modi has already visited the US with a list of Indian businesses looking to collaborate with US businesses on 4G and 5G solutions. The TCS-Tejas-CDoT consortium, Shyam Vihaan Network, Niral Networks, Lekha Wireless, Signaltron, Resonous, Amantya Technologies, WiSig Wireless, and Galore Networks are among the companies that the government is anticipated to pitch to their American counterparts. These have experience with 5G Open RAN work as well as 4G radio access network (RAN) technology. Additionally, there are businesses developing 5G core, base stations, IoT sensors, 5G smartphones, and mobile edge cloud solutions.