The benefits of communication technology should be available to all communities, including those that are least developed. Software defined radio technology is a key enabler for increasing access to telecommunications in rural areas of developing nations and emerging market locations.

The ability to share mobile telecommunications infrastructure allows network operators to bring cellular service to areas that historically havent been able to justify the cost of deployment due to a smaller addressable market in a remote location or a reduced average revenue per user (ARPU) opportunity based on a rural emerging market economy.

Many of these locations not only lack cellular services but dont even have access to traditional landline communication services.  The introduction of cellular services is life changing to the individual and can drive a greatly enhanced economic situation for the community.

Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology provides a solution to the challenges that have limited infrastructure sharing and teledensity growth. Vanus SDR permits operators sharing infrastructure to run different cellular standards (such as GSM and CDMA) and to upgrade their offerings on independent timetables, while isolating the base station configuration and monitoring functions of the operators. This facilitates sharing, which reduces costs for both operators and consumers while maintaining competitive differentiation.

SDR technology makes it possible to implement a virtualized radio access network (RAN). Vanu, Inc. has done this with its MultiRAN product. The Vanu SDR design based on open standard platforms and operating systems was a key enabler for the implementation.

Software defined radio is the key foundation that enables the Vanu solution to allow for sharing of network infrastructure between multiple radio standards and operators.  SDR is the technology that enables both of these value propositions.

Lets first review multi-standard functionality, the ability to simultaneously run more then one cellular radio standard on a single radio access network infrastructure.  Traditional base stations require separate equipment to be deployed per radio standard.  When radio access networks need to be upgraded, an operator must buy new hardware, have a technician must travel to the location of each base station in order to swap out hardware in support of the upgraded radio standard.  Software defined radio reduces ongoing capital and operating expenses by turning network upgrades into software downloads, while enabling faster time to market for upgrades and new service functionality.  These factors help drive a lower cost of overall ownership and faster return on investment, helping network operators view previously undesirable locations as an opportunity to reach new customers and drive new revenue streams.

Multiple operators sharing a virtualized radio access network drives many of the same cost comparisons as the multi-standard portion of the solution.  Additionally, the virtualization of the network enables competition within a single market where individual network operators may not be able to justify an end-to-end deployment of their own.  Competition drives choices for the end user and potentially lower price points.  There is also an enhancement of cost savings though reduction of discrete operator equipment and power consumption.  This not only lowers costs, but creates a greener solution.

Vanus software defined radio standards run on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) processors enabling network operators a route to market in a non-proprietary fashion.  The use of industry standard virtualization technology enhances the sharing capabilities by allowing individual management and control of their virtual networks and security from other network operators on the same infrastructure.   

Yes

Yes

The benefits of communication technology should be available to all communities, including those that are least developed. Software defined radio technology is a key enabler for increasing access to telecommunications in rural areas of developing nations.

The ability to share mobile telecommunications infrastructure allows network operators to bring cellular service to areas that historically havent been able to justify the cost of deployment due to a smaller addressable market in a remote location or a reduced ARPU opportunity based on a rural emerging market economy.

Many of these locations not only lack cellular services but dont even have access to traditional landline communication services.  The introduction of cellular services is life changing to the individual and can drive a greatly enhanced economic situation for the community.

Think of the opportunities enabled by the introduction of cellular communications to remote locations.  As an individual, the ability to receive more immediate medical, educational, commercial and entertainment focused communications from metropolitan regions.  Without telecommunications a sick individual would have to travel for a face to face interaction with a medical practitioner.  Travel to a metropolitan area may not be accessible to all individuals in remote regions.  Cellular communications would allow for initial information to be gathered and communicated prior to the first initial visit.  Remote health care interactions can increase the life span of a community.  

Remote educational options bring new opportunities for future earning potential to a remote community.  This not only benefits the individual, but the community as a whole.  Enabling individuals to help themselves grow through education and training enables communities to grow through an increase in disposable income and the nurturing of entrepreneurial thought.  Connectivity to metropolitan regions will make remote locations more desirable, increasing income within these locations and driving more opportunities for increased valuation of residential dwellings.

A simple thing like a basic cellular phone enables individual growth to drive community economic growth.  Think about what your life would be like without a cellular or landline lifeline to the outside world.

Vanu, as a United States based company, focused its initial sales efforts on domestic operators.  One of those initial sales provides an excellent example of how multi-mode operation of the system permitted a wireless operator to offer expanded services based on Vanus technology.  

MidTex Cellular is the licensee of spectrum in central Texas covering a geographic area just slightly smaller than the state of Massachusetts, with roughly 100,000 people living there.  Much of the revenue opportunity for MidTex Cellular, like many other rural operators in the United States, results from roaming charges.   Rural operators rely on these charges because the comparatively small populations that reside in their coverage area represent a lower proportion of overall traffic on their network than transient populations (for example, on a state or interstate highway).  

With the end of analog service in the United States, many rural operators were forced to choose between incompatible digital standards.  A choice of one such digital standard would reduce the roaming revenue potential for that operator, since the operator would be unable to serve subscribers using the other standard.

MidTex Cellular was the first commercial deployment of Vanus SDR in the United States.  MidTex cellular was able to deploy with one standard, and later add a second standard to increase the roaming revenue available to MidTex.  Today they offer both GSM and CDMA functionality based on Vanus solution.  

There are three key aspects of Vanus radio infrastructure solution that are exceptional: use of commodity processing platforms, extensive adoption of open systems components, and an ecosystem-based product.

Vanus radio solution is built on a processing platform derived from IT computing components; hence the solution is able to exploit new technologies, such as virtualization, that are developed as part of the massive investment in IT computing. This is a major change from traditional infrastructure solutions, that are based upon proprietary hardware platforms. Although many vendors now claim to exploit software defined radio (SDR) technology, Vanu was the first to do so and is still the only one able to exploit commodity technologies.

A great example of the leverage that is obtained from using processing elements derived from IT systems is the delivery of a virtualized radio access network (RAN). Vanus standard Anywave multi-standard software radio solution runs on Linux on Intel processors; ready availability of virtualization technology in both the OS and CPU made it much easier for Vanu to add virtualization to its radio solution than it would be for a traditional hardware radio vendor to support equivalent modifications. Furthermore, the MultiRAN virtualized basestation can be deployed as a software-only upgrade to existing Anywave networks, allowing mobile operators to make spare capacity available to other operators, resulting in reduced costs and increased viability of network deployment in sparsely populated areas.

Open systems are an integral part of Vanus solution, for everything from hardware platforms and operating systems to software components and management tools. In addition to accelerating time-to-market and reducing development cost, adoption of open standards enables the creation of a component ecosystem for the software RAN solution. All of the hardware components in a Vanu RAN solution are based upon standard platforms developed and sold by third parties, while open interfaces between components allow integrators to readily combine elements from different vendors. This encourages creation of a component ecosystem, which gives integrators and mobile operators much greater choice in how networks are procured, reduces cost through competition, and thus helps increase the proliferation of mobile wireless networks to previously underserved areas.

The utilization of standard off-the-shelf IT components to deploy cellular telecommunications functionality in order to empower less developed regions is an exceptional change to the standard business model of providing cellular communications.

The IT industry follows a course of open standards which allow the user base to have more options for designing a solution through industry standard off-the-shelf equipment in order to meet their specific business and customer needs.  Although Vanu is based on software defined radio technology, which is used in various applications throughout the world of technology, Vanus version of this technology is different.  Basically the secret sauce to the functionality discussed in this case study.

What these three exceptional differences translate to for the cellular provider is the ability to not be tied into a single equipment vendors technology lifecycle of forced platform and software upgrades for fees to stay current with their timeline for change in the market.  This enables decisions to be made based on the requirements coming from the customer base and not the roadmaps determined by the equipment vendors.

Vanu has overcome a number of technical challenges in developing and deploying software RAN solutions since 2003. In addition to the fundamental technological achievement of a software radio solution implemented on general purpose processors, a number of other aspects of Vanus solution have been innovative.

Vanu was the first company to have a cellular infrastructure system certified by the FCC for commercial operation. Working closely with the FCC, Vanu achieved certification of the GSM system in 2004, and has since been able to use the flexibility of certification as a software defined radio to deploy enhancements to the system without requiring a lengthy recertification process.

The use of an all-IP network infrastructure in deployed solutions has also had to overcome a number of obstacles. Current core network infrastructure is still predominantly circuit-based, and thus requires the use of gateway devices to interface to the Vanu RAN.  Vanu has partnered with companies pioneering all-IP soft-switch infrastructure, but their use is not yet widespread. Similarly, the majority of backhaul links between the centralized switching functionality and the remote base stations are still TDM leased lines (T1 or E1), and also require additional equipment to transport IP over such links.  In the future, native IP backhaul will save operators significant OPEX, and Vanu is at the forefront of IP backhaul.  In the most remote locations, this backhaul might be enabled via satellite or microwave.  A migration is taking place within the industry to transport IP traffic over these access methodologies as well.

The key challenge that had to be addressed when it came to operators sharing a RAN, was the need to maintain independent management control for each operator, and isolate confidential network configuration and traffic data between operators. Leveraging virtualization technology, made possible by use of open standard technologies and platforms, enabled Vanu to easily convince operators that these goals were both accomplished.

Vanus SDR solution arose out of the observation that Moores law made prior SDRs obsolete before they reached the market because of the time and complexity of software development aimed at running on rapidly evolving signal processing hardware.  The Vanu team bet heavily that the IT industry in general, and Moores law in particular, would continue to benefit from heavy investment by numerous players, and chose to optimize its solution for software reuse and portability across multiple generations of hardware.  

That choice created numerous technical challenges.  To begin with, one method the Vanu system uses to facilitate software reuse (which was unheard of in the radio industry at the time), was an operating system (OS).  Several challenges arise when you introduce an OS into the high speed signal processing portion of a radio.  For example, the OS tends to introduce uncertainty with regard to when a command in an application will be processed.  This is a big problem when the communications protocol requires millisecond or microsecond precision in signaling.

Initial demonstrations of the system showed that it worked with first generation, analog cellular systems.  Despite this success, we were told it would be impossible for the system to work with second generation digital systems.  When we showed that we could implement digital systems, we were told that we could never implement wideband systems (used for third and fourth generation cellular systems).  We have since implemented wideband systems and, for the time at least, no one is saying what we are doing is impossible.  

Demonstration that the system is feasible has been critical to building support and an ecosystem of suppliers interested in supporting this new approach to building wireless networks.

Achieved

Over time the use of software defined radio and virtualization technologies could enable network operators to share complete mobility networks and not just the radio access network portion of the equation.  This would continue to reduce initial and ongoing costs of deploying and maintaining cellular infrastructures.

New business models will emerge from organizations wishing to deploy and manage shared infrastructure networks instead of network operators.  This will create a new cottage industry in the telecommunications market.  Tower companies and IT services organizations could branch into this market opportunity.

Global emerging markets will have the opportunity to become more competitive with larger more established counterparts through the enablement of their remote locations with cellular communications.  The changes in the way cellular telecommunications networks are designed and deployed will enable a whole new generation of technology users.  Software defined radio and virtualization can lead to the continued collapse of functionality in these networks to a much smaller set of required equipment and a smarter set of networking functionality.  These trends can be seen in the onset of self optimizing networks that identify and correct anomalies to create the best optimized solution within a network.

The concept of this technology has been quickly embraced.  As network operators continue to look for ways to reduce ongoing capital and operating expenses, new technologies are looked to in order to achieve these goals.  Additionally the need to meet requirements for telecommunications in remote and emerging markets, mandates consideration of a different way of doing business then current practices in metropolitan markets.

The key challenges in emerging markets tend to focus upon regulatory requirements to serve these markets, but locations that dont drive required ARPUs.  In remote markets, issues such as difficult areas to travel to, inconsistent/unreliable power sources, and the desire to be able to manage, troubleshoot and repair remotely drive consideration of non-traditional solutions.