Hear industry analysts weigh in on the power of Open RAN
In late 2020 we asked industry analysts to answer our questions about Open RAN.
On this page:
Flexibility | Performance and innovation | Open RAN Alliance | Cloud RAN | Open source | Security | Project-specific integration |
How do we achieve flexibility in building multivendor Open RAN networks?
"We're seeing 5G deployments with companies which are looking at disrupting the radio architecture and capitalizing on greenfield implementations. That said, as a service provider with a wide area network, you've got to be careful balancing how that is implemented - the systems integration requirements and particularly the feature transparency between the different vendors."
Phil Marshall
Tolaga Research and Topio Networks
How can Open RAN give operators more flexibility in building 5G RAN networks?
How to evaluate Open RAN performance, cost? How does Open RAN enable innovation? What to expect in the near future?
"Intelligent Controllers are particularly important for that purpose as well as an alignment between what it is that you're trying to achieve with your network - what use cases that you're developing and supporting and how RAN can be optimized for their purpose."
Phil Marshall
Tolaga Research and Topio Networks
"Disaggregating the cell site gateway is a work in progress. Open RAN leads to the "SDN-ization" of radio access, to some extent. The recent move by the Open Networking Foundation looking at how to design a Radio Access Network Intelligent Controller (RIC) is a very good example of that."
Stéphane Téral
LightCounting Market Research
Do you expect the Open RAN will lead to similar network performance as non-Open RAN networks?
"Now, with 5G requiring low latency, you might want to move the Distributed Unit closer to the Radio Unit. We are going to learn a lot with these new, more distributed architectures. That's where I believe it's going to be very interesting to see how we can deliver on the performance requirements of 5G use cases."
Stéphane Téral
LightCounting Market Research
Will Open RAN lead to lower RAN equipment or lower network costs?
"The one of big things gets discussed with Open RAN is lowering of cost, specifically lowering CAPEX. While the RAN is about 70% of the cost of building a network, the actual equipment is a minority part of that 70% A lot of the cost is the crew going out to the site installing. Those things don't change with Open RAN."
Iain Gillott
iGR
Why do service providers join the Open RAN Alliance?
"The number one reason that operators tell me about why they participate, why they join or how they evaluate the Open RAN Alliance is they want to see more innovation in the RAN layer. They want to benefit from the same innovative competition that they've seen in other parts of the network."
Patrick Filkins
IDC
What is the relationship between Open RAN and Cloud RAN or vRAN?
"They both have strong synergies, because the Open RAN allows you to distribute your architecture in a flexible manner using standardized interfaces and obviously in a cloud environment that's advantageous because you can leverage that flexibility to be able to better meet the demands of the RAN network implementations."
Phil Marshall
Tolaga Research and Topio Networks
How is Open RAN related to open source? Does Open RAN compliance mean that the network software is open source?
What are the security considerations in Open RAN?
"I'm not sure Open RAN introduces really new network security weaknesses just because we have those open APIs. Having new vendors come in doesn't mean those vendors are inherently insecure or those APIs are insecure. If you design the network properly, if you design with security in mind - you can deal with those security issues."
Iain Gillott
iGR
How does the O-RAN Alliance tackle security challenges? Are there any lessons to be learned about open collaboration and security?
How is Open RAN different from project-specific integration?