The plea for resilience at NetworkX 

An executive from China Telecom told Wireless Watch that while the Chinese operators may be well advanced in their network development and 5G SA rollouts, it is still useful to visit the European operators to learn from their experiences.

Given the increased tension in relations between China and the US and certain European countries, it was notable to see such a strong presence from Huawei at the event. The Chinese vendor was the main sponsor for the Mobile Networks stream and, as is often the case, had the largest booth at the event.

Nokia, which had a booth at the opposite end of the hall from Huawei, has been calling on European leaders to remove Huawei from their supply chains in recent weeks.

Nonetheless, the mood was ebullient. Industry members were busy making deals, meeting contacts, and sharing their experiences, despite the geopolitical backdrop.

In fact, the greater pressure was not from an East versus West perspective, but from vendors versus operators. The Orange Wholesale CEO, Trabbia, made this the central theme of his, somewhat ominous, keynote speech.

“Resilience is becoming more and more critical, and is probably one of the main challenges for critical operators today,” said Trabbia.

“We live in a world of rising threats and disruptions that can be caused by technical incidents, by cyberattacks, or by geopolitical tensions, can have massive impacts on our economies. How long do you think that society can hold with no connectivity before massive disorder comes?”

As one of the world’s largest subsea cable operators, Orange Wholesale is vulnerable to the increasing attacks on this critical piece of internet infrastructure. But this is not the only issue at hand, according to Trabbia.

“Cyberattacks are growing. The geopolitical risk is growing as well, and we live in a world that is more and more volatile, more and more unpredictable, where allies of today are not necessarily our friends of tomorrow. In geopolitical terms, dependency is slavery, and we need to understand that,” he said. “The only way to answer to that is with a radical paradigm shift of our core principles.”

Trabbia did not suggest that operators work with a supply chain that fits the geopolitical allegiances of their nation, but a complete overhaul of the operator supply chain and operating model.

Trabbia’s vision of a new model would have an emphasis on ‘softwarization’ and open-source principles, which fits with Orange Group’s longer-running plans to overhaul its international operations. The operator is in the process of a network softwarization strategy to create a telco cloud architecture.

“In the beginning, we used to make everything ourselves and then we were moved to a situation where we buy all our equipment from suppliers. This is changing, thanks to softwarization and thanks to open source. We are embracing that with our switches, routers, and telco cloud capabilities, and we are building services on top of these functions to serve our customers,” he said.

The leads neatly to Trabbia’s pitch to the audience for his company’s own services, in particular a Core Network as a Service (CNaaS) offering that Orange Wholesale is trialing with customers now.

The cynic would assume that Trabbia is amping up the fearmongering to encourage other operators to sign up to the new Orange Wholesale products, but other attendees at NetworkX, from smaller operators, showed interest in the CNaaS product, on the basis that it provided independence from the typical vendors – Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson, and ZTE.

The argument in this case is not that operators have a geopolitical bias as to whether they use a Chinese or a European vendor – it is that they want rid of the whole basket of major vendors. This, of course, is the premise of the Open RAN movement, which has been disappointing in its slowed momentum in recent years.

The new medium could be products from smaller players, including operators like Orange themselves, which provide vendor diversity that operators are desperate for.

“The mission is not to make everything on our own. The ambition is to not be dependent, because dependency is slavery,” said Trabbia.

What did the major vendors in the audience have to say about this vision of resilience? Well, you can imagine that they did not see it in the same terms as Orange.

Speaking to Wireless Watch later that day, Ericsson’s Hanna Maurer Sibley, CTO Europe, Market Area Europe, Middle East and Africa, said that vendors and operators should be working in closer alliance.

“If anything, we should be closer to the operator as far as security is concerned. We have a lot of security functionality and protocols, and we are constantly improving,” she said.

Any insecurities in the network are likely the fault of the user and not the vendor, Sibley argued.

“Operations is a sensitive activity in the network; you need to monitor who has access to the software. People trust mobile networks, and we all have a duty to protect them,” she said.

Many operator colleagues seemed on board with Trabbia’s vision, but as to whether they have the will or capacity to follow through is another question. Trabbia closed his speech with a plea to the industry:

“The biggest challenge is not the technology, because the technology is here. It’s not the expertise, it’s not even about money. The biggest challenge, actually, is transforming our DNA, transforming the way we work, transforming our architecture, value chain, our skills, our operations. We need to rebuild this model, to be able to reach the level of resilience that will meet the standards of tomorrow.”