There are a couple of items below from the RCR team about brighter days for open RAN, a technology that has faced integration and industrialisation issues, plus vendor exits, in recent times but continues to captivate the operator community with its long-time promise of cost savings and vendor diversity. The message from them is that it is evolving, still, from impossible hype and experimental triumphs through to some kind of measured realism about its role as a credible operational tech in mobile networks. 

The first, from Cat, recounts a conversation with network software and systems vendor Wind River, which argues that advances in cloud-native design, automation, and ‘open fronthaul’ are delivering carrier-grade performance and operational resilience in open RAN systems. There is some myth-busting in there; criticisms about performance, security, operations do not cut it any longer, it says. The technology is not a speculative concept; it is a key part of strategic RAN planning, affording a controlled pathway to modernize networks at scale. 

So says a true believer. But analyst house Dell’Oro is not without hope. It forecasts that near‑term revenue from open RAN sales may soften but that long-term growth remains, as scheduled, driven by open fronthaul and 5G/6G demand. Dell’Oro usually makes good sense. Clearly, operators face structural, industrialization, and ecosystem challenges. But the sense is that open RAN will have its day – as a realistic component of long-term RAN strategy, and not just as a revolutionary swap-out shortcut.