Like last year, there will still be a lot of talk about Open RAN at the next Mobile World Congress (MWC) to be held from February 27 to March 2 in Barcelona. This approach, which aims to open up network technologies, must have the same liberating virtue as open source in the software world since the end of the 1990s.
Developed by the O-RAN Alliance, which brings together operators and equipment manufacturers from around the world, it could, in the same way, reshuffle the cards of the telecom market.
The objective of the Open RAN is to establish standards in the design of the constituent elements of a mobile network. Composed of antennas and base stations, a traditional radio access network (RAN) provides the link between the connected terminals – smartphones, tablets, laptops – and the core of the operator’s network.
One step closer to network virtualization
The various software and hardware components of this RAN often come, for compatibility reasons, from the same equipment manufacturer. Namely, Ericsson, Nokia or Huawei for the most part. By establishing standards, the Open RAN aims to ensure this interoperability and to reduce the dependency of operators on a single supplier.
In this, the approach is similar to that initiated to virtualize and then “cloudify” the core network. The Open RAN architecture virtualizes the elements of the cellular network previously managed by dedicated hardware and software. It thus makes it possible to separate the basic functions into several distinct units: the radio unit (RU, Radio Unit), the distributed unit (DU, Distributed Unit), the centralized unit (CU, Centralized Unit), the intelligent controller (RIC, RAN Intelligent Controller).
Reduction of costs and carbon footprint
By freeing itself from the underlying infrastructure, an operator reduces its costs by choosing the supplier with the best bid for each component. Based on “open” standards, it may call on functions and services developed by third-party publishers. This reduces the marketing of innovative solutions. By integrating multi-vendor equipment and software, an operator can also more easily share its infrastructure with a partner operator.
In addition, the Open RAN facilitates the resolution of network incidents and offers the possibility of providing companies with services on demand with guaranteed quality. This approach also makes it possible to gain in energy efficiency by optimizing the consumption of equipment and putting inactive elements of a network on standby. Finally, the Open RAR will strengthen the security of 5G networks as desired by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).
The new favored operators
In a report, the main European operators – Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia (TIM), Telefónica and Vodafone – draw up an inventory of the adoption of Open RAN. If “the technology is deployed on tens of thousands of sites around the world,” it is mainly due to new operators. They have the advantage of starting from scratch, like the Japanese Rakuten Symphony, which built a 100% Open RAN network from scratch.
The report also notes greater maturity in Anglo-Saxon countries. “Many Open RAN deployments are already visible, especially in the UK and North America, facilitated by government support.” Support that European operators already demanded from Brussels two years ago. For the time being, only pilot projects have emerged in Europe pending larger-scale deployments planned from 2025.
Agreement between Orange and Vodafone
2023 could, however, kick off the Open RAN made in Europa. For Michaël Trabbia, Chief technology and innovation officer of Orange, “the significant progress made recently by the Open RAN industry has given us the assurance that Open RAN and cloud-native RAN are now ready for the first commercial deployments in industrial networks in Europe from 2023.”
Putting words into action, Orange and Vodafone have agreed to jointly build an Open RAN network and share it in rural areas of Europe where both operators have mobile networks. The first commercial sites should be deployed this year near Bucharest, Romania.
