Chief Product Officer, Ceragon Networks
MWC23 TIP Pavilion Panel: Featuring Gil Gabay, Ulik Broida, Abhijeet Prabhune, & Sameer Ashfaq Malik
In this MWC23 panel from the TIP Pavilion, Gil Gabay, Vice President Strategy & Business Development at Ceragon, sits down with Ulik Broida, VP Products at Ceragon Networks, Abhijeet Prabhune, VP Global Solutions Engineering at IP Infusion, and Sameer Ashfaq Malik, Senior Principal Analyst at OMDIA. Where they discuss the state of network disaggregation in the telecoms industry.
About Ulik Broida
In April 2025, Ulik Broida introduced the Ceragon IP-100E, a next-generation E-band wireless solution for 5G backhaul. Broida stated that Ceragon’s in-house chipset development, including the new Neptune system-on-a-chip, allows the company to integrate multiple capabilities into a single piece of silicon, resulting in smaller products with improved reliability and longer lifespans. He noted that E-band spectrum is often license-free or low-cost, making it a compelling alternative to traditional microwave with lower total cost of ownership. Broida said Ceragon is launching five new high-capacity E-band products delivering 10 gigabits per second and beyond. In a March 2023 panel at MWC23, Broida discussed network disaggregation, stating that giving customers a choice for each network slice from multiple vendors pushes prices down. He said that in the wireless backhaul use case, the Ceragon IP-50FX can replace two network elements—the cell site router and the wireless transport unit—delivering CAPEX and OPEX savings. Broida also noted that service providers are looking to transform MPLS services into disaggregated transport and then add segment routing and SRv6 to enable additional use cases like IoT.
Transcript (14 segments)
M
Moderator0:10
This application in wireless network transport updates and review. So I think we all agree that the network these applications does move from the concepts like to real world. Now the discussion revolves around, well, can we realize the benefits? What are some of the challenges that we still need to overcome? So that's what I want to discuss with you, our distinguished panel members. We've got with us Samir Malik, who is the Senior Principal Analyst for Service Providers Routing and Switching Networks at Omdia. Thank you. Welcome. We have Avijit, who is the VP of Global Solutions Engineering for IP Infusion. And we've got Ulik, who is the EVP Products for Ceragon Networks. So thank you all for joining. Thank you.
We're going to do a speed dating version of panel discussions, right? Because we are short on time. So we'll ask you each a question, starting with you, Samir. So you recently published an end-user survey covering IP transport network disaggregation, where you surveyed over 100 service providers globally. So what were some of the key takeaways from your survey? What are service providers telling us when it comes to network disaggregation?
S
Samir Malik1:50
So first, thanks for inviting me on this and talking about my survey. We did the survey all over the world, including the North America region, APAC, European, and different parts of the world. And mostly the people who covered are actually taking decisions that either they go for disaggregation or not. That's very important. And as per my research analysis and survey, it was very interesting to find that around 80 percent, approximately 80, are looking forward to go for this disaggregation. I mean, you believe it or not, but that's the dream for everyone. But the interesting part is, among 80 percent, 18 percent are only for the tier one, the big one service providers. The rest all are the medium size or the normal service providers. I mean, I cannot consider them the big one. And you can see that their urge of going disaggregation, right? And the next question in my survey, in my research, I asked them that what is the motivation? I mean, everybody knows that the freedom of choice is the biggest motivation for them, right? But another thing that comes up is the perfect competition, or they said there is a very limited competition in system one, or I mean, the tier one system vendors, right? So we need to make it more bigger. That's the biggest motivation for them, so we can have an equal opportunity to choose whatever we need and we can control more better roadmaps in terms of technology. So that's the biggest motivation for them. And another question is about, I mean, what about the security and reliability for the DCSGs? That's very important, right? Because people think that maybe the disaggregated vendors, they don't have that capability. So to overcome that, when they said that, I mean, around 48 percent, they believe that we have no issue with the reliability and the security of the boxes. And that's a big number. I mean, you can imagine disaggregation is not very good, still is a new baby in the industry, right? As far as the research is concerned, and still people are very much satisfied in implementing that one. So I mean, overall, I mean, I cannot, we have a limited time, but I can say that overall disaggregation having a great future. The only shortcoming that I can see, I mean, as an analyst, is about the operational complexity. That how much the disaggregated vendors, including the software, the hardware, the system integrator, they can solve the operational complexities. Because CTOs are much concerned if there is any problem in network, who is going to solve it? Where is a single point of blame or single point of claim for them to find out the issue? So that's around my mind. That's not wrong. I think 44 percent people, they're still complaining that the operational complexity, how we can solve it. And I think the beauty of the tip today and with the panelists today, they're more better talking about traffic engineering and reliability issue for that one, right?
M
Moderator4:35
So Avijit, we are hearing from Samir that in terms of reliability, a disaggregated solution is on par with a monolithic solution. But let's take this a level deeper. So when you engineer an IP network, is there any difference in terms of having a disaggregated solution versus a monolithic solution? And how do you deal with interoperability issues?
A
Avijit5:03
Yeah, great question. Thanks again for having me on this panel. In July 2020, that's when we started our first production deployment of DCSG, or disaggregated cell site gateway, with Asia Pacific Telecom. So since then, the DCSG ecosystem has grown and matured in three aspects that Samir brought up. The first is the IP transport, right? The packet transport and services. This is all the basic IP MPLS segment routing with L2VPN and EVPN services. That's standard. That works exactly the same whether you are going disaggregated or legacy systems. The second aspect is the flexible converged access and transport. This might be you want to bring 3G, 4G, and 5G together, or add business services, or want the flexibility of having fiber or microwave backhaul. So that flexibility aspect that Samir talked about becomes very important, and DCSG is actually differentiated in that. Then the last piece is the operational piece, which is bringing all the business and integrating the systems for the operations guys to feel comfortable that they can now start rolling out the services on a mass scale. And TIP standardization, the compliance framework, and the gold batch testing has been pivotal in all of these aspects, right? The gold batch is given to commercial solutions that can be deployed today with a very extensive end-to-end multi-vendor ecosystem testing. And IP Infusion OcNOS has been able to earn that TIP gold badge. Now putting all of this solution together, the IP50FX and IP Infusion OcNOS together can be deployed today by service providers for flexible transport, migrating the services from legacy to EVPN, and providing the flexible options of fiber as well as microwave backhaul. So but the proof is in the pudding, right? So you know, with Asia Pacific Telecom, Kcell, and a lot of other service providers deploying the services today with this DCSG for both 5G, legacy, and new services, that's where it's at, and that has already been happening since 2020.
M
Moderator7:29
Right, that's great. So turning now to Ulik, Samir talked about and also I've hinted about two issues. One is obviously the benefit of the reduced TCO of a disaggregated solution, right? So do you think that that benefit can be realized? In which use case can it be realized? And as a derivative of that, once you are disaggregating the different layers of the network, you have to put all the pieces together. As Samir said, you know, you need one point of contact to do that for you.
U
Ulik Broida8:08
I think best is to talk about cost. We divide the answer according to the way our customers use the solution. So we'll start with the general concept of routing. What we call disaggregated open routing in this case is merely the fact that we take a solution and you cut it to slices, and you have a choice as a customer for each of these slices from multiple vendors. This by itself pushes the price down. If you go to a more focused use case, when we talk about wireless backhaul and we talk about the disaggregated cell site gateway or cell site router, in this use case, actually this box, this IP50FX, can take the place of two network elements in the customer network: the cell site router and the unit of the wireless transport. We call it open transport. These two in one have very significant cost saving both on CapEx and OpEx from day one. So this, I would say, from cost perspective is a very significant factor. Now I hear the concern of customers in the survey about who is owning the solution. Customers are looking for something that we call single point of blame. When we have so many vendors comprising the solution, who should they approach to install, commission, support, and so on? And our solution to that is from the day we chose IP Infusion for our partner, we are creating this solution together, we are testing this solution together. In both companies, there are people that know the end-to-end solution. And in our use cases in the last year, when we are selling this product, we are the single point to blame. We are the point of focus for all matters, good or bad. And I think this addresses this very legitimate concern.
M
Moderator9:57
And so at the end of the day, what do you think is going to be the leading deployment model? So is it going to be someone like Ceragon who integrates the entire solution? How do you see that?
U
Ulik Broida10:08
That as we go on, this solution will be more widespread and customers will get more, I would say, the confidence to use their own system integrators. In the beginning, we see they are coming to us, either to IP Infusion or to us as the owners of the technology. But because this is actually open, basic, and because of the TIP certification program, everything is fairly simple. We believe that this will propagate to customers using their own system integrator of their house, as they are familiar with. So it will become more of a natural thing for them.
M
Moderator10:46
Right. So let's talk a little bit, maybe on the specific use case of wireless transport. So we've talked about the ability to provide a disaggregated solution that is on par, but is there actually something, some added benefit in the wireless transport case that a disaggregated solution can provide?
U
Ulik Broida11:05
Yeah. So what we see is that our partnership with IP Infusion actually ensures that we have a partner which is focused on the layer three network operating system, bringing the features as they come out. So our customers really can enjoy the best, up-to-date, most advanced features in this space, like SRv6 and other nice buzzwords that are running around. And therefore, they get the basic wireless transport solution they looked for with the most updated layer three features that they can get.
M
Moderator11:36
So on that point, I have a question. Let's talk a little bit about roadmap going forward. How do you see the network disaggregated sort of routers evolving in terms of the routing functionality?
A
Avijit11:51
So that's good. So I'll talk about two things actually. One, that Ulik mentioned, which is innovation. Right now, if you start looking at how disaggregated can change the innovation game, right? If you look at the IP50FX box, it has some really cool features in terms of link bonding, how it manages the array, the radio controllers, how the radio controller management system sits on the DCSG itself to provide better performance. And all of that innovation has happened through this partnership with Ceragon and IP Infusion by working together and creating that software and hardware synergy, which is not possible if you are doing only with one partner, right? If the whole solution is coming from only one person. That's one aspect. Then looking at the roadmap aspect, right? Most of the service providers where they are looking at is they're starting to look at their MPLS. How do I first transform my MPLS services from an existing network into a disaggregated transport? Then they are looking at, okay, now that I've done that, how do I add segment routing as the next aspect of the transport? And the reason for that is to add more services, obviously, to make money, right? Because now you're going beyond TCO and saying how can I make more money by using these technologies? And then the next step is SRv6, which goes a step further and starts enabling additional use cases like IoT or TV over the top, OTT, those kind of aspects.
M
Moderator13:26
Okay guys, thank you for a very fruitful discussion. Everyone, don't forget to visit us at our booth and have a very good rest of the conference.