ORAN Very Nearly Ready for 'Prime Time,' With Deployments Increasing, Experts Say
Wireless executives don’t think open radio access networks are ready for mass deployment now, but believe that could happen soon, Heavy Reading analyst Simon Stanley said during a Tuesday webinar. Based on a recent Heavy Reading survey, 19% believe ORAN is ready now, and 38% say it will be within the next 12 months, Stanley said. More than 70% see ORAN as likely ready for broad deployment within two years and 17% report they completed their first ORAN or virtual Ran (VRAN) installation, he said.
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The survey shows Europe got started first, but North America will catch up with the first installations in the next two years, Stanley said. Among respondents, 53% of those in Europe expect to complete their first ORAN project this year, versus 36% in North America, he said. About 75% of respondents in both regions expected to complete an installation by the end of 2024, he said. Executives ranked “improved economies of scale for generic hardware” as the top reason to adopt ORAN, he said.
Most investment in ORAN has come in the past five years and open platforms seem likely to become more widely used soon, said Kevin Smith, field sales engineer at Kontron, which makes embedded computer modules and other gear. Credit the ORAN Alliance in part, he said. “It was a little bit of the wild west four or five years ago, but things have aligned around a common platform,” he said. The survey results are in keeping with what he sees in the field, Smith said. “Everyone is waiting for the deployments to start,” he said.
Initial deployments were in emerging markets in Europe and Southeast Asia, Smith said. As software evolved “the U.S., which is much more centralized in terms of … deployment models, has started to show deployments,” he said.
ORAN is in the “it’s alive" stage, said Mike Wissolik, director-product marketing, semiconductor company Xilinx. “The technology is working,” he said: “It’s just coming together. The first deployments are happening.” ORAN isn’t easy to use yet and is still “clunky,” but early deployments show it works, he said.
“This is kind of where things get fun,” Wissolik said. After this stage, industry will focus on making more vendors able to interoperate and start “optimizing on cost and power,” he said. The final stage will come when VRAN equipment becomes competitive with traditional equipment, he said.
In the past 18 months major operators have made significant deployments at scale, said Sindhu Xirasagar, Intel software product line manager. The growth “speaks to the maturity of the solutions out there” and that virtualized RANs “can compete on power, performance, cost,” she said. “It’s field proven,” she said.
Xirasagar sees a mix of deployments in the U.S., with greenfield deployments by companies like Dish Network and brownfield by established providers like Verizon. That brownfield providers are going into ORAN shows it's "ready for prime time,” she said. Companies with legacy networks are experimenting because they think ORAN is “where the world is going” and “they are figuring out how to do it now.” Carriers want “maximum flexibility, … scalability, sustainability and possibilities for innovation,” she said. Intel also sees a lot of focus from providers on making their networks greener and more energy efficient, she said. Carriers want networks that take advantage of automation, she said: “5G networks are not your old 4G networks -- they’re much more complicated.”