As Jack Welch famously stated, “Change before you have to.” We live in a dynamic world where opportunities should exist on a level playing field for everybody, not just for certain groups. COVID-19 has leveled that playing field in many ways; one that stands out to me is the move toward hybrid work. A hybrid work world is an inevitability for us all, regardless of whether we live in dense urban environments or more scattered rural communities. Forty-six percent of the workforce is looking to move because they can now work remotely, and employers are responding with five times more remote job postings on LinkedIn than before the pandemic began. Eighty-seven percent of American workers who found themselves working from home during this period wish to continue doing so at least one day per week. Most agree that some form of hybrid workplace is ideal.
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Our work product and our working environments should both be driven by fair access to the internet infrastructure we all use. This is especially true as new forms of working together, creating together and collaborating together will be amplified in a post–COVID-19 working world. What has come home to me more strongly than ever before is that collective capacity has immense potential to evolve rapidly on a level playing field for access, collaboration and creation.
The hybrid workforce is going to require infrastructure to support that idea of collective collaboration. While much of the urban U.S. has access to high-speed internet, there are initiatives to give the same advantage to rural areas.
Recognizing the power of a fair shake to create better economic conditions, the U.K. government has set specific targets to provide at least 85% of U.K. premises with gigabit broadband by 2025, with the intention to “get as close to 100% as possible.” At the same time, the U.K. also exercised a choice to discontinue installing new 5G telecom equipment from Huawei. For years, the telco model has been to design the system working with propriety equipment bought from traditional equipment manufacturers such as Huawei. However, by removing a key manufacturer from the equation, new possibilities have emerged, with open RAN playing a pivotal role.
Without getting too far into the technical details, Open RAN allows for the disaggregation of the key pieces of the radio access network, which is what connects the network to your phone. These pieces include the radio unit, the distributed unit and the centralized unit. From there, Open RAN helps to “open” the protocols and interfaces between the radios, the compute platform, the software infrastructure and the applications. Breaking these components apart gives telecommunications companies many more choices about how they build their network, and with whom. In this model, they aren’t stuck with one box that does everything. Rather, they can pick the best-of-breed providers of each component. Furthermore, they gain the flexibility to swap out components when they are no longer needed, rather than replacing the entire integrated system. This choice drives competitive innovation and pricing from the vendors of each component. The result: the best technology and fast time-to-market, at the best price, with flexibility for change.
Open RAN was pioneered by Vodafone to drive greater innovation through a diverse and open vendor ecosystem. This year Vodafone and its recently selected vendors will start work to extend 4G and 5G coverage to rural South West England and most of Wales. The company is also planning to launch open RAN in other areas of Europe and in Africa.
While COVID-19 has been unpleasant for most and tragic for many, one silver lining is that it has forced us to look differently at the way we work and communicate. The choices we make now are informed by a new perspective that could give us all an opportunity to collaborate and grow together.
