ORAN Already Shaping Network Deployments Globally, Experts Say
Open radio access networks (ORAN) and the movement to the cloud are already shaping RAN deployments worldwide, said Robert Curran, consulting analyst at Appledore Research, said during a TelecomTV virtual summit Tuesday on the future of the RAN.
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The RAN equipment market was traditionally dominated by a handful of companies, with a generational procurement cycle of new gear every seven to 10 years, Curran said. What we’re seeing is “the impact of cloud still trailing through and then the impact of open RAN on adjusting the shape of that market,” he said: “They’re starting to be felt for sure.” AI will eventually become more important, but machine learning technology that has been available for years is already being incorporated into the RAN market, he added.
Curran said he believes ORAN has moved into “the mainstream” of the RAN market, “rather than being a fringe thing.”
With every new generation of wireless, the architecture changes, said Prakash Desai, senior director-product management at ORAN company Wind River. In Europe, carriers are using every “G” from 2G to 5G, he said. ORAN “is bringing its own flavor.” From the operators' perspective, the biggest asset is their spectrum, and the hardware architecture stack and the topology are different for different frequencies, he said.
Going forward, all deployments will be based on ORAN, Desai predicted. Deployment at scale “with automation and AI” will “play a big role.”
Sarat Puthenpura, chief architect-ORAN at the Open Networking Foundation, said there are three key themes for next-generation wireless: disaggregation and openness, the virtualization of network functions “as much as possible,” and the adoption of machine learning and AI capabilities. ORAN provides “a vehicle to achieve all three.” ORAN is more than just a new technology architecture, he added.
Warren Bayek, Wind River's vice president-technology, said many challenges seen on open networks were easy to predict. Everyone knew ORAN “would be a seismic shift in terms of operational difficulty,” he said. “Integrating an ecosystem across multiple partners is much more difficult than deploying traditional RAN, where one vendor owns everything from top to bottom.”