Open RAN (Executive Summary)

Open RAN – Opening the RAN Ecosystem for Competition and Innovation

Open RAN, is set to be the hot topic of 2021 in telecom. Open RAN seems to offer solutions to many of today’s mobile operator problems, particularly:

• Increasing pressure on mobile provider revenue and CAPEX investment.
• The political pressure to remove Chinese vendors from mobile networks.

At the same time, closed RAN solutions continue to offer CSPs potentially superior performance, security and probably most importantly, simplicity. They are also a key component of differentiation for the remaining major RAN suppliers, offering them strong incumbency in a mobile operator.

This report seeks to give a high-level overview of what O-RAN is and what it means for CSPs and vendors alike in terms of opportunity and threat.

The opportunities and challenges of successful O-RAN are likely to be the same as were promised with network virtualization (NFV). We believe that unlike NFV O-RAN is more likely to fully succeed because of the alignment of technology readiness, commercial demand and political pressure.

Our purpose in developing this report is not to dive into the detail of Open RAN specifications, but to rather highlight the opportunities for innovation and CAPEX/OPEX savings in the interfaces. As well as to explain the potential added complexity of a multi-vendor, virtualized, software based RAN and what needs to be done to effectively manage this successfully.

This Open RAN report will be of significant interest to:

CTO at CSPs:

• Understand the benefits of Open RAN technology and the necessary Network Automation Software framework that needs to be in place to achieve a successful O-RAN deployment.

Head of Innovation at CSPs:

• Gain up-to-date understanding of the opportunity for CSPs in delivering ORAN enabled new services

Heads of Marketing, Strategy, Product and Solutions in Suppliers of BSS, OSS, Telecom software:

• Gain detailed understanding of the key opportunity for suppliers in supporting network providers and O RAN suppliers in successfully deploying their solutions to CSPs

Suppliers of Open RAN software and hardware

• Gain an understanding of the importance of Network Automation Software in enabling the adoption of multi-vendor Open RAN solutions

CIOs and Heads of Enterprise Products & Solutions at Enterprises:

• Understand the potential of Open RAN to allow new latency sensitive applications both within public and private 5G networks

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