Cisco, Intel and Dell Technologies are among a handful of vendors that boast open radio access network (RAN) market influence, but the still-gelling nature of the market means that influencer status can change and so could the open-ness strategies of those players.

Analysys Mason grouped that trio of vendors as well as Samsung, NEC, Rakuten Mobile and Meta in the most influential sphere of open ecosystem players in the open RAN space. That selection was out of 209 total product and service providers the analyst firm said were “active in this segment.”

Caroline Gabriel, research director at Analysys Mason and author of the report, highlighted the diverse background and interconnectedness of those players.

“Dell and Intel are leveraging their cloud expertise and ecosystem influence to build their open RAN propositions but know they need partners to deliver many aspects of the solution, including radio units,” Gabriel wrote. “Rakuten, through its Symphony arm, is basing its platform around its partners for its Japanese roll out. Samsung and NEC are influential because they are challengers in the RAN space but have significant radio expertise and credibility with brownfield operators.”

However, she added that if their influence grows it could impact how they continue to operate within what is hoped to be an open ecosystem.

“Open RAN is an immature market and the strategies of the vendors, and therefore our assessment of their ecosystem influence, will change,” Gabriel noted. “For instance, Samsung or NEC might achieve considerable success in open RAN contracts, especially with the current trend for operators to deploy single-vendor open RAN in the first phase. That might, in turn, make these two vendors less motivated to remain fully open or to work with large numbers of partners, and so their ranking might be reduced.”

She added that 68% of more than 80 operators evaluating open RAN architectures said an open ecosystem was “critical or very important.” But that survey also found increased performance and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) were more important to those operators than a diverse supply chain.

“If an open approach does not deliver cost and performance improvements, it will not be adopted,” Gabriel wrote.

That sentiment was echoed by Amy Zwarico, director for cybersecurity in AT&T’s Chief Security Office, who earlier this year during a virtual event explained that financial concerns will be key to the broader adoption of open RAN technology.

“The other piece that we can’t overlook is that it will be a financial decision,” Zwarico said in relation to challenges in open RAN architectures gaining greater market share at operators. “When you can do a cloud-native RAN cheaper than the current way we deploy RAN, it will be adopted. If it’s more expensive to run, unfortunately, the CFOs of companies don’t really think that cool technology is just good enough to pay extra for.”

Mark Poletti, director of mobile networks at CableLabs, built on Zwarico’s comments during the same panel discussion by noting open RAN adoption will also have to work through operator purchasing cycles.

“If you consider operators having a three-to-five-year purchasing cycle of infrastructure, it’s maybe the second year into the 5G purchasing cycle, just for argument’s sake,” Poletti said. “While this is happening, I’m waiting for the cycle to come up where they make another purchasing decision. Open RAN, and cloud-native RAN, and cloud-native cores are all progressing. The one argument could be made to say that by the time that cycle ends, and operators are starting to look at new opportunities and new ways to deploy, all the benefits that we talked about with cloud-native RAN … will be mature enough for the operators and have enough diversity where an operator will be able to pick and choose which ones will fit into their next cycle of purchasing.”

Dell’Oro Group recently reported that Samsung, NEC, Fujitsu, Rakuten and Mavenir were the top open RAN revenue generators through the first quarter of the year, though market trackers cited a slowdown in segment growth coming on the heels of a strong 2022.

The research firm noted that open RAN revenues increased between 10% and 20% during the first quarter of the year, which was down from the more than doubling in revenues that occurred in 2022. Virtualized RAN (vRAN) showed a bit more growth in the latest quarter, with market revenues increasing between 20% and 30% year over year.

Stefan Pongratz, VP at Dell’Oro Group, told SDxCentral that the markets continue to be dominated by a handful of operators, which causes an oversized influence on the market.

“The reality is that there is just a couple of large operators right now that are driving the market, both in open RAN and vRAN, and they are slowing down [their investments] right now,” Pongratz said, adding that this is seen by operators slowing down their 5G deployment investments.

LightCounting Market Research came to a similar conclusion, noting a handful of open RAN operators – Dish Network, Rakuten Mobile and some Rakuten Symphony customers – “kept the market flat year over-year and produced double-digit sequential growth.”