Assessment of Open Ran: Difference between revisions

Most telecommunications executives interviewed by Senza Fili believe that Open Ran is the greatest disruptions in the industry. <u>[Discussion: @Aron what do you think is the best way to specify the exact link source (page) of the source when citing]</u> Patrick Lopez, Global VP of Product Management for 5G at NEC said, “If we look at how fast Open RAN has emerged and reached a level of maturity that allows deployments at scale, we may conclude that it is one of the fastest-moving technologies in the telecom market ever.”<ref name=":4">https://senzafili.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/SenzaFili_DD_ORAN_Ecosystem.pdf<!-- Page 48 --></ref> His views were echoed by others who believe that Open Ran would help them solve vendor-lock ins and other issues that were common in the traditional RAN. However, they also noted that Open Ran comes with its own challenges, which need the cooperation of the whole industry to overcome them. The greatest challenge being integration. Santiago Tenorio, Head of Network Strategy & Architecture at Vodafone once said in a webinar<ref name=":6">https://www.parallelwireless.com/wp-content/uploads/Parallel-Wireless-e-Book-Everything-You-Need-to-Know-about-Open-RAN.pdf<!-- Page 48 --></ref>, “We haven’t even scratched the surface of system integration challenges.” The good news is that integration is easier in greenfield deployments when compared to brownfield deployments. That is why most deployments have been in rural areas where the operators have to start from scratch. Deloitte estimates that as of December 2020, there were 35 Open Ran deployments in the world<ref name=":5">https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/pt/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/TEE/The-Open-Future-of-Radio-Access-Networks.pdf<!-- Page 6 --></ref>. Around 85% of the deployments were in developing markets, with the majority being done in rural areas.  But what exactly is Open Ran? Can it replace the traditional RAN? Does it reduce costs as argued by most experts? Let’s have a look!                             

The RAN segment consumes around 80% of the total CAPEX needed to build a network<ref name=":6" />. This calls for ways to reduce it, especially due to the rising challenges of flat revenues and increasing maintenance costs. Cost savings in Open Ran depend on many factors. For instance, an operator can save on the total cost of ownership(TCO) by choosing cheap vendors and proprietary solutions instead of COTs hardware. Adding visualization and cloud-native architecture will also help the vendor reduce maintenance costs. In general, cost savings can only be achieved if the operator chooses the most efficient options offered by Open Ran. But there have been testimonies confirming that Open Ran indeed reduces costs. For example, Rakuten said it reduced CAPEX by 40% when it deployed Open Ran instead of traditional Ran<ref name=":5" />. A report by Deloitte indicates that Open Ran can reduce CAPEX and OPEX by up to 50% and 35%, respectively.