This material maps the Open RAN ecosystem from various perspectives. It lists companies and institutions active in the Open RAN industry and maps the adoption of Open RAN across different stages and regions. It has been compiled by John Baker of Mavenir, based on crowd-sourced inputs from the industry. This material complements the O-RAN Map, which shows O-RAN progress based on announcements from mobile network operators, the OTICs and O-RAN PlugFests.
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) of Saudi Arabia seeks to gather comprehensive information and recommendations pertaining to the Open RAN (ORAN) initiative. This includes insights into projects, pilots, research and development (R&D) initiatives, as well as examination centres and labs. The objective is to thoroughly study and understand ORAN technology, economic, financial, strategic, and technical implications. Recognized as a future network technology trend, ORAN holds the potential to reduce costs while enhancing innovation in the Radio domain. MCIT aims to develop a strong foundation for ORAN technology rollout and local ORAN ecosystem development.
Refer to the attached document for details and ways to respond.
UNDER THE OPEN RAN MOU by Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, TIM and Vodafone
The Open RAN Technical Priorities Release 4 is an update of the documents published in June 2021 (Release 1), March 2022 (Release 2) and April 2023 (Release 3) respectively. It is the result of the work carried out under the MoU on Open RAN signed by Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange S.A., Telefónica S.A., TIM S.p.A. and Vodafone Group Plc.
Each release has prioritised different aspects of Open RAN development. Release 1 focused on the main scenarios and technical requirements for each of the building blocks of a multi-vendor RAN. Release 2 mainly focused on intelligence, orchestration, transport and cloud infrastructure, addressing also the energy efficiency goals and targets to support sustainable Open RAN. And Release 3 mainly focused on developing requirements on SMO and RIC building blocks and to enhance other areas such as Cloud infrastructure, O-CU/O-DU and O-RU, addressing also the security topic to support more secure Open RAN.
The fourth release of the technical priorities has primarily focused on developing further requirements on SMO especially related to AI/ML framework, interworking with traditional RAN and slicing management and on Security with MoU operator vision about the zero trust approach and requirements for certification and also on Cloud infrastructure mainly focused on O2 and Acceleration Abstraction Layer, while other areas have been significantly enhanced such as RAN software, O-RU and O-CU/DU. Moreover, this new release focuses in more detail on the RAN hardware acceleration topic and various challenges related to both the look-aside and in-line acceleration card models. In particular, the RAN HW acceleration requirements are now contained within a dedicated section of the MoU
Technical Priorities document.The Technical Priorities are those that the signatories consider priorities for Open RAN solutions. The technical priorities serve as guidance to the RAN supplier industry on where they can focus to accelerate market deployments in Europe, focusing on commercial product availability in the short term, and solution development in the medium term. The 5 operators also intend for these priorities to act as an input into TIP’s OpenRAN Release Framework. The Technical Priorities do not represent any alignment on procurement / product selection processes of individual signatories.
The overall objective is to promote a fast pace for the development of competitive Open RAN solutions in Europe, across other regions and ultimately accelerate the global adoption of the technology. The Open RAN MoU Group technical priorities will evolve over time following the progress of Open RAN standardisation, in the respective standardization bodies, and the market development of Open RAN solutions.
Open RAN Technical Priorities Release 3 is an update of the documents published in June 2021 (Release 1) and March 2022 (Release 2) respectively. It is the result of the work carried out under the MoU on Open RAN signed by Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange S.A., Telefónica S.A., TIM S.p.A. and Vodafone Group Plc.
While Release 1 focused on the main scenarios and technical requirements for each of the building blocks of a multi-vendor RAN, Release 2 mainly focused on intelligence, orchestration, transport and cloud infrastructure, addressing also the energy efficiency goals and targets to support sustainable Open RAN.
This Release 3 has primarily focused on developing further requirements on SMO and RIC while other areas have been significantly enhanced such as Cloud Infrastructure, O-CU/O-DU and O-RU. Moreover, this new release focuses in more detail on security topics and various challenges introduced by the disaggregation promoted by the O-RAN architecture. In particular, the security requirements are now contained within a dedicated section of the MoU Technical Priorities document. Energy efficiency (EE) topics were also analyzed in more detail, with new requirements identified in various streams, for example, Cloud Infrastructure, O-CU/O-DU, RIC use cases and RAN features.
The Technical Priorities are those that the signatories consider priorities for Open RAN solutions. The technical priorities (i) serve as guidance to the RAN supplier industry on where they can focus to accelerate market deployments in Europe, focusing on commercial product availability in the short term, and solution development in the medium term, and (ii) are intended to act as an input into TIP’s OpenRAN Release Framework, which can then be developed with the industry at large to create requirements that can potentially be used as the basis for certification, promoting an efficient supply chain. The Technical Priorities do not represent any alignment on procurement / product selection processes of individual signatories.
The overall objective is to promote a fast pace for the development of competitive Open RAN solutions in Europe, across other regions and ultimately accelerate the global adoption of the technology. The Open RAN MoU Group technical priorities, as with any industry-driven requirements developed through TIP, will evolve over time following the progress of Open RAN standardization, in the respective standardization bodies, and market development of Open RAN solutions.
The ‘Open RAN Security White Paper’ is the result of the work carried out by the security experts of Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange S.A., Telefónica S.A., TIM S.p.A. and Vodafone Group Plc being the signatories of the Open RAN MoU. This document starts with an introduction of the MoU framework, and the O-RAN Alliance organisation and its activities. It focuses on all security aspects within Open RAN technology, describing the risk-based threat modeling and remediation analysis conducted within the O-RAN Alliance for building an effective Open RAN security architecture. In addition, it provides details on the Open RAN Security Focus Group (SFG) activities, which focuses on developing the four security specifications that are the pillars of the Open RAN security architecture. These include threat modeling, security requirements, protocols and tests.
This Open RAN Technical Priorities Release 2 is an update of the document published in June 2021. It is the result of the work carried out under the MoU on Open RAN signed by Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange S.A., Telefónica S.A., TIM S.p.A. and Vodafone Group Plc. Release 1 focused on the main scenarios and technical requirements for each of the building blocks of a multi-vendor RAN. Release 2 builds on those requirements and focuses on intelligence, orchestration, transport and cloud infrastructure, with the aim of promoting a fully automated and interoperable Open RAN system. The energy efficiency goals and targets to support sustainable Open RAN deployments have also been addressed. It is expected that Open RAN networks will gradually become more energy efficient than traditional RAN, benefiting from Open RAN concepts such as cloudification, disaggregation and native AI. The overall objective is to promote a fast pace for the development of competitive Open RAN solutions in Europe, across other regions and ultimately accelerate the global adoption of the technology. These requirements will evolve over time following the progress of Open RAN standardisation and market development of Open RAN solutions.
This “Open RAN Technical Priorities Document” is the result of the work carried out under the MoU on Open RAN signed by Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange S.A., Telefónica S.A., TIM and Vodafone Group Plc. This document offers a comprehensive list of technical requirements that the signatories of the Open RAN MoU consider priorities for Open RAN architecture to guide and foster a competitive open RAN ecosystem, promoting openness and flexibility. It includes the main scenarios and radio configurations targeted for operators’ deployment, providing hardware and software requirements for each of the building blocks of a disaggregated RAN. The overall system relies on open interfaces to allow multi-vendor deployment in a fully interoperable manner, and intelligent radio controllers and orchestration in a cloud-native environment to unleash the potential of a fully automated network. The overall objective is to promote a fast pace for the development of open, virtualized and programmable RAN solutions, and support a timely roll-out of open RAN networks in Europe.
