If there’s one mobile network technology more overhyped today than 5G, open radio access network (RAN) architecture has to be it.

Open RAN bears all the histrionics of an emerging technology that pits wireless industry giants and the status quo against those who want to unlock and open network interfaces to a larger group of players. It’s also mired in geopolitical posturing, highlighting a troubling chasm that threatens global cooperation and agreement on cellular technology standards.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are on the line, including the power and influence of multinational companies that effectively control the market today. It may sound hyperbolic, but it’s not a stretch to consider open RAN the most divisive technology to confront the wireless industry in many years, perhaps decades.

Open RAN commands a lot of attention, and for good reason. If it succeeds at scale, it will completely change how mobile networks are designed, deployed, and operated.

In theory, open RAN enjoys broad support. In practice, it remains rare.

Debates have largely shifted from technical merits a couple years ago to timing, commitment, and standardization. Although specifications are still and will likely remain under development for the foreseeable future, many industry heavyweights and observers now view the shift to open, disaggregated architecture as irreversible.

Unsurprisingly, the world’s largest RAN vendor Huawei remains a firm nonbeliever in open or virtualized RAN.

Open RAN Confronts Timing Issues

“Open RAN is certainly complex, particularly given the numerous stakeholders that you have. Everyone from the OEMs to the operators, to the regulators, software companies, you name it — a lot of different people to try to align behind a common purpose,” said Dan Hays, principal at PwC’s Strategy& consultancy.

“While open RAN has run into some challenges, I don’t think that it’s going to impede the progress of the general move toward a more open architecture and toward a more software driven set of network infrastructure. That seems inevitable, but what we are seeing is that open RAN may well miss most of the 5G generation,” he said.

Of the at least 180 commercially deployed 5G networks today, one, Rakuten Mobile, is running on open RAN. Dish Network is poised to be the second sometime in early 2022.

“If you look at 5G rolling out in the most economically developed and populous countries in the world, as it already is, it’s unlikely that you’re going to have operators go back and rip and replace the 5G equipment that they’ve already invested in just to deploy open RAN,” Hays said.

Moving the Goalposts to 6G

“At this point even though it seems far away, open RAN may wind up being more of a 6G type of architecture versus one that’s widely adopted for 5G,” he added.

John Strand, CEO at the Denmark-based consultancy Strand Consult, agrees with this assessment and claims Ericsson and Nokia, despite their heavy involvement in open RAN development, don’t expect the technology to gain significant traction until the latter end of this decade.

“This is too little, too late for 5G,” he said. “Some of these things will be part of 6G,” but the standardization hasn’t yet effectively leveled up to the industry’s primary standards body 3GPP.

“The question is: How big of a percent of the installed base will be open RAN?” Strand said. “I think in 2025, less than 1%. And in 2030, less than 3%.”

Projections aside, questions also remain as to the technical readiness of open RAN, particularly in brownfield networks. Bear in mind that “decisions on mobile network infrastructure purchases, which can range in the billions of dollars, typically get made years before we ever see a commercially available service,” Hays explained.

Brownfield Open RAN: Where Are You?

Indeed, the anticipated momentum and outlook for open RAN rides heavily on a brownfield operator’s willingness and commitment to shift more, if not all, of its infrastructure to open RAN.

Tareq Amin, CTO at Rakuten Mobile who now concurrently serves as CEO at Rakuten Symphony, shares this view. He’s outspoken and undoubtedly the industry’s leading voice and evangelist for open RAN.

“It’s too late for any company to stop the momentum of doing the right thing,” he told SDxCentral. “Our major responsibility now is to look at one brownfield player that we need to partner with, and address the challenges because there will be challenges.”

This includes finding the right mentality at a brownfield operator that’s “willing to tolerate initial hiccups for a long-term gain,” Amin added. “I assure you we’re going to have issues but it’s important that we commit and work and partner with them on addressing these challenges to make sure that open RAN scales.”

Our or we, in this case, refers not just to Rakuten but the entire coalition of open RAN vendors striving for this outcome.

“Most large operators now really want to do this, it’s just a question of this transformation stage — how to get over that hump between where I am today to where we need to be” as an industry,” Amin said.

“The issue’s maybe not just necessarily the technology or the readiness of the technology as much as it is organizationally are you ready? I mean, a lot is going to change, a lot is going to change in the type of skill sets that you need to run these systems,” he added.

Open RAN Languishes in Labs

While operators in mature markets have already committed to use traditional RAN architecture for 5G, Amin remains convinced more of these carriers will introduce open RAN in “pockets” and different geographies around the world.

“Whether you use it for 4G, 5G, or 6G, it would give you a perspective to understand the technology outside of the lab domains. And that perspective to understand the nuances of how to run this in a real network is so different than running it in a lab,” he said.

“I’m still optimistic that there is a path even in 4G or 5G, that open RAN has a business, has a return on investment, but at the end I want to see a lot more collaboration and ecosystem creation,” Amin continued.

“The next step is commitment. I think operators need to commit. It’s just a matter of saying ‘I’m going to do this.’ People have to accept that when you create with a new technology, it will have issues, so what?”

Many of the world’s largest mobile network operators have made pledges to support and eventually deploy open RAN extensively. Multiple trials and tests are underway, some relegated to a lab, but deployments in a live environment? Not so much.

“In telco, you need that believer,” Amin said.

“We need a big breakthrough, and hopefully maybe a Telefónica or another large group like Telefónica to come in and endorse this technology and stand behind it, understanding it’s going to have some issues and challenges, but also having the foresight to look at the future and say ‘well this makes sense,’” he added.

“This is not the time to wait. I think everybody needs to jump onto this ship and define a clear tactical strategy to put these products in production.”