Nokia might have lost out on AT&T’s initial push to deploy open radio access network (RAN) technology into its 5G network, but ongoing market maturity and deployment timing leaves the Finnish vendor with plenty of time toward being a player in the open radio access network (RAN) space.

Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark explained during the vendor’s latest earnings call that while he sees open RAN “gradually gaining speed, I don't expect and I have not seen that the AT&T decision would have led to any kind of increase in open RAN interest in other parts of the world.”

The executive cited forecasts that predict open RAN equipment will account for just one-quarter of total RAN spend by 2028, “so that gives you a perspective.”

Joe Madden, lead analyst at Mobile Experts, predicts open RAN-related revenues will slump over the next few years, before gaining traction later this decade. Madden told attendees at last fall’s Cable-Tec Expo 2023 event that open RAN-related revenues peaked in 2022 at just over $2 billion, will dip slightly this year, and then drop to a $1.5 billion per year run rate between 2024 and 2026.

Open RAN openness Lundmark also asked that industry observers maintain perspective on the current openness of open RAN.

“What I really suggest is that people need to follow up very closely that what the facts about different rollouts are including in all announced projects,” Lundmark said. “How quickly will it be and will it be true O-RAN, or will it be O-RAN where you just have the same supplier on both sides of the interface.”

This was obviously a pointed jab at AT&T’s decision to rely heavily on Ericsson to supply the carrier’s open RAN platform, a move that other rivals have also noted.

Lundmark cited Nokia’s work with Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and a more recent deal with Germany’s Deutsche Telekom as being more in line with the open RAN ethos.

“We have already connected our DU (distributed unit) and CU (central unit) to five suppliers’ radio units, which is more than any other supplier,” Lundmark said. “So gradually, open fronthaul interface is becoming commercial reality. It starts from simple radios and only gradually moves to massive MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output), but it will eventually get there as well. It will be part of the market, a small part of the market for quite some time, but as I have said before, we see it more as an opportunity than a threat for Nokia.”

Adam Koeppe, SVP of network planning at Verizon, expressed similar sentiment toward the need for a true open RAN system to SDxCentral in a recent interview.

“Today, the baseband function and the radio function, they actually use an interface called CPRI, which is common public radio interface, and it’s not really common at all,” Koeppe said. “Each supplier, and it’s typically the same supplier for the baseband and the radio, they put their secret sauce into that interface to ensure that both sides of the equation work well. Well, that’s not open. We want to ensure that O-RAN actually has an open interface between the two sides of the equation, the baseband and the radio.”

AT&T and Ericsson have so far been muted on the specific openness of their current plans. Igal Elbaz, network CTO at AT&T, explained in a press briefing as part of the Ericsson deal that while AT&T was not yet interested in digging into the specific O-RAN Alliance features that would be used as part of the deployment, the deployment would be an open architecture.

“You should assume that we have the ability to introduce multiple types of vendors into our network, and that assumes that all aspects of the open RAN specification are things that we are planning to deploy and take advantage of,” Elbaz said. “That includes massive MIMO, that includes all parts of our network.”

Analysts have noted this will be an ongoing challenge for operators and vendors as they approach their deployment plans.

“While the open RAN ecosystem is not mature, small-scale deployments will continue for the next few years,” Saqlain Ali, 5G, 6G and ORAN senior analyst at ABI Research, explained in a report. “However, with further advancements related to open RAN silicon, multivendor interoperability and testing, and the availability of RIC (RAN intelligent controller) and ULPI (uplink performance improvement) interface for massive MIMO could result in more favorable results and an inflection point could happen between 2027 and 2028.”