Open RAN has been greeted with much fanfare as it is seen to be the gateway to programmable networks, innovation, and customization. Networking’s progress in programmability has long lagged the IT industry overall. Hardware-based installations are a fixture in the industry, and virtualization has barely made a dent so far. Open RAN promises to change the sector’s landscape as it forms the bedrock for persistent innovation with platforms, monitoring, and application stores to enhance performance in networks.
Greenfield Open RAN installations are rare, with the remarkable exception of Rakuten. Dish is building a nationwide telecom network in the USA that will be cloud-native from the ground up. Most other efforts to adopt Open RAN must contend with legacy networks.
Fortunately, 5G private networks provide a hospitable environment to use Open RAN for advanced applications such as video inspection and robotics. The expertise of system integrators and neutral hosts accelerates adoption. Statistics indicate a much greater involvement of new players in 2021.
The expected adoption of Open RAN will climb steeply over the next two years, with the current adoption of 12 percent estimated to rise by 33 percent. It will then steady with another 33 percent who foresee deployment in the next three to five years.
The barriers to the adoption of Open RAN are inherent in its very character, which combines disaggregated elements of software, hardware, and control systems. Monolithic systems were pervasive in the telecommunications industry in the past.
Open RAN technologies are outside the comfort zone of the industry. They require composing networks from disparate components, often using IT with unfamiliar partners in the management consulting, system integration, and neutral hosts community. The costs of integrating technologies from many vendors are high. In addition, security vulnerabilities increase with open and standardized technologies.
Yet, Open RAN scores on many other metrics as attractive enough to wrestle with the challenges of advancing it to maturity. For one, the costs are lower for those who can access or develop skills in integration. To be sure, most users at this stage have experienced higher costs as the technology has not matured fully or has risks of integration.
The programmability that comes with Open RAN creates a new vista of opportunities for customization and premium services. Disaggregation of network components allows their recomposing with software with many more variations. For example, advanced applications like robotics at the edge need greater differentiation for the performance needs of each customer. In addition, customized services with network slicing are where Open RAN’s flexibility allows the tailoring of services for the desired performance.
The landscape, the culture, and the ecologies in the telecom industry will be unrecognizable in the near future as Open RAN sweeps the industry. Those who overcome the daunting challenges at this stage will be rewarded with a higher pace of innovation.
