Tag Archives: open RAN

New Opportunities in Active Mobile Infrastructure Sharing

5G introduces two key technologies that significantly advance active mobile infrastructure sharing opportunities. Firstly, network slicing enables the creation of distinct virtual networks on the same physical infrastructure. These slices offer performance guarantees and ensure that clients receive contracted Service Level Agreements (SLAs), instilling confidence and predictability for both operators and customers. Notably, network slicing requires a standalone… Read More »

Canned RAN: A Stage Towards Open RAN Maturity

A trend is taking shape where open RAN is made of canned solutions – I call this Canned RAN. The concept of interoperable RAN elements is yielding the path for a subset of integrated solutions from a few vendors that plan to dominate the open RAN market (additional perspective here). After a couple of years of initial buildup,… Read More »

Does Open RAN Stimulate Innovation?

Proponents of open RAN argue that opening the RAN interfaces will stimulate innovation. They claim that non-interoperable interfaces allow incumbent vendors to lock out new innovative players and stifle the market. With a small number of incumbent vendors owning much of the market share, the pressure to innovate is low. Incumbents counter by stressing the optimized performance across… Read More »

A Perspective on Open RAN

There are over 800 service providers, but market power favors a handful of radio access network (RAN) vendors who dictate the tempo of technology. With the RAN accounting for around 60% of the network total cost of ownership, open RAN promises to change the balance of power in favor of services providers by reducing vendor power through more… Read More »

Clarifying the Confusing RAN Types and Nomenclature

Radio access networks have many descriptors that confuse the non-specialists. This includes open, virtual, cloud, centralized, distributed and cooperative RAN. Confusion is understandable because there are many inter-related aspects. Here, I outline the fundamentals elements that define RAN types and clarify the nomenclature. The Three Pillars of RAN Architecture, implementation and deployment are the three elements that define… Read More »