Now that the dust has settled following the record high mid-band 5G spectrum auction, the real work begins for U.S. carriers and their respective radio access network (RAN) and telco application vendors.

AT&T, T-Mobile US, and Verizon are taking divergent paths to mid-band 5G. The trio last week shared details about their respective deployment plans in a series of back-to-back-to-back analyst events, and variances include spending levels, timing, coverage commitments, and the network architecture that will underpin each network. 

Some of the mid-band 5G gear from RAN vendors Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung will support virtualized or open RAN frameworks, but that doesn’t necessarily mean either system will become dominant or even adopted at scale by U.S. operators in the near term. 

The advancement of these frameworks should also present a wave of new opportunities for smaller players, including hardware and software vendors, to earn more business and gain market share with the nation’s largest operators, according to analysts. Those opportunities could be narrow and short-lived, however. 

“Open RAN will put more pressure on tier-one RAN vendors and will open new doors for new entrants,” Monica Paolini, founder and principal analyst at Senza Fili, told SDxCentral. “Many new vendors have entered the market, but only few will do well and most likely they will be eventually acquired by the bigger guys.”

While the best emerging players will do well, it probably won’t lead to a significant increase in the number of RAN and telco stack vendors in the long term, Paolini explained. “No matter how open the RAN is, wireless is still an industry where vendor size matters and nobody wants a market that is too fragmented.”

There might be some turbulence initially, followed by acquisitions and the rise of new vendors, but there will be “no overwhelming change in the long term,” she added. 

Stefan Pongratz, VP at Dell’Oro Group, agrees with that assessment. “The shift toward vRAN and open RAN is accelerating rapidly, and while there is no doubt this is where the ship is headed, it would be somewhat surprising if the U.S. operators decide to change the risk profile at this juncture, given the competitive dynamics,” he explained. 

“Incorporating some parts of the open RAN specification is one thing, but changing the supplier to a non-traditional RAN supplier is a slightly different ballgame, especially with massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO),” Pongratz added.

Massive MIMO is especially important in mid-band 5G networks because it allows operators to densify network coverage, increase capacity and coverage, and reduce the need for incremental outdoor sites, all of which translates to less labor and lower costs. “Given that non-RAN related capex and opex comprises the majority of the overall site total cost of ownership, operators will obviously think twice before adding additional sites and instead try to use technologies like Massive MIMO and beamforming to extend the life of the existing grid,” Pongratz said.

Collectively, these factors are playing a significant role in the faster-than-expected pace of adoption of massive MIMO, which has “now become a mainstream technology topping $10 billion of RAN investments in 2020,” he added.

Ericsson last month revealed a trio of massive MIMO mid-band 5G radios that it intends to release at the end of the year. Nokia added massive MIMO 5G radios to its portfolio last year and will likely follow up soon with more specific plans for mid-band 5G deployments in the U.S. Samsung began shipping a massive MIMO radio for C-band deployments in the U.S. at the end of 2020. 

Massive MIMO is underdeveloped in the open RAN space, and proprietary vendors like Samsung, Nokia, and Ericsson claim a 64-antenna array that supports high capacity and performance is best served by the custom silicon they integrate into their RAN products. 

The scope of the opportunity for smaller players to generate more business with network operators on mid-band 5G will be impacted by all of these variables. It does, however, seem likely that as more bandwidth becomes available there will be even greater expectations on creating additional value from that traffic with application software, Robert Curran, consulting analyst at Appledore Research, told SDxCentral.

“There’s only going to be more IT in the network as more spectrum is made available,” he said. There’s also “huge interest in private networks from vendors who already have a strong footprint in enterprise IT hardware and software. The challenge is to what extent and in what form enterprises will want to buy their private networks from the big carriers, rather than dealing direct with enterprise vendors,” he explained. 

While all three nationwide carriers are expected to move toward open RAN and vRAN, there are different paths to that goal and it’s not a binary choice, Paolini explained. Each operator will open the RAN to varying extents, and that will impact their respective choice of vendors based on how centralized or distributed the network topology is for each carrier, she added. 

Will Townsend, senior analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said he expects Verizon to embrace open RAN to mitigate expenses for mid-band 5G deployment. But, he warned, “if Rakuten is the benchmark it won’t be straightforward. Rakuten is the poster child open RAN carrier and they have had delays based on software integration.”

AT&T said it remains committed to network virtualization, open source technology, and open RAN architecture. And T-Mobile has consistently been more reserved about the viability of vRAN and open RAN, but it has indicated a willingness to reconsider its approach upon further development of the related ecosystems.

“I expect operators to swim differently within the open RAN and vRAN ocean, but it is too early to know who will do what,” Paolini concluded. “But they all seem to have open RAN included in their latest requests for proposals and that’s a good indication of their commitment to it.”