Nokia remains unconvinced of open radio access network (O-RAN) maturity, but the vendor knows that interoperable software remains a key component to support the commercialization of open RAN networks.

“O-RAN is still evolving on the hardware side,” Raghav Sahgal, president for Nokia’s Cloud and Network Services (CNS), said during an interview at a Goldman Sachs investor conference this week. “It's an interesting concept where you disaggregate at the edge. And there are pros to it, which O-RAN will drive innovation. But there's also cons to it as to how you're going to bring that ecosystem together, and who will ensure that that entire ecosystem delivers the performance. So these are still things that are getting worked out.”

Sahgal said that for Nokia, software is the key to ensuring the ecosystem can come together to deliver the needed performance. He explained that the software the enables commercial open RAN to work needs to be agnostic to the underlying hardware.

“If you're in the software business, you have to anticipate that there could be different radio types, be it the radios of today or the O-RAN that comes tomorrow, or there will be different transport types, different core types,” Sahgal said.

This requires software vendors to adhere to standards to lessen interoperability challenges.

“The reality is that all of our customers will have a multitude of hardware, devices, and capabilities and infrastructure,” Saghal said. “And so what we do is to make sure that we create software and business logic that works against any infrastructure type, be it RAN, O-RAN, virtual RAN … any type from any vendor that may come out in the future.”

Saghal’s notion that this market is still evolving was played out earlier this year by greenfield operator Dish Network.

The carrier was forced to delay the commercial launch of its cloud-native open RAN-based network due in part to what it said were integration challenges.

Dish relies on dozens of vendors to provide its network components, including Nokia for its 5G core. However, getting all of the components to work together was a challenge.

“We’re six months behind where we thought we’d be, and it’s my fault. We just didn’t maybe anticipate that we would have to do as much on the technical side,” Dish chair and co-founder Charlie Ergen said during a company earnings call earlier this year. “Ultimately, we found that we had to become the system integrator. It wasn’t a role that we thought we were going to take on. But with all the vendors, somebody’s got to be the middleman between them and be the glue that holds them together. We probably squandered some time, but that’s my fault.”

Despite those concerns, the open RAN market continues to gain momentum.

Dell’Oro Group recently noted that segment revenues surged during the first half of the year. The analyst firm tied the growth to an increasing number of brownfield operators in North America deploying open RAN equipment.

The report found Samsung, Fujitsu, and NEC were the leading open RAN revenue drivers, maintaining a market advantage over entrenched RAN vendors like Nokia, Ericsson, and Huawei.

“The open RAN narrative continues to morph,” Stefan Pongratz, a senior analyst at Dell’Oro Group, wrote. “While there is no question that this shift towards more openness is moving in the right direction, it is more salient than ever to understand how this movement is impacting the dynamics between the established and new suppliers. The results in the quarter taken together with the underwhelming deal momentum with the emerging RAN suppliers are starting to shift the scale in favor of open RAN being more a new requirement for the established players than a disruptive architecture for the smaller suppliers.”

The firm predicts open RAN revenues will double this year compared to last year, though to Nokia's open RAN market maturity point, it will still only make up 5% of the overall RAN market.