• Open RAN to represent 7% to 10% of the broader 2024 RAN market and the revenues are projected to account for 20% to 30% of the total RAN by 2028.

Open RAN revenues (comprising virtualised or purpose-built baseband plus Open RAN radios) and vRAN (vCU and/or vDU, excluding radios) revenues suffered a double-digit decline in 2023 after four years of intense acceleration.

5G slowdown continues to weigh

Even though growth prospects are strengthening outside of the US and Japan, this has not been sufficient to bridge the volume gap, as the first wave continues to account for over 90 per cent of the overall Open RAN market.

Despite the disappointing performance throughout 2023 and the ongoing challenges with multi-vendor RAN, Stefan Pongratz, VP and mobile infrastructure analyst at Dell’Oro Group, still anticipates that most operators will gradually incorporate more openness, virtualisation, intelligence, and automation into their RAN roadmaps over time.

“Market conditions will likely remain challenging in 2024, with the broader 5G slowdown continuing to weigh on the market. However, we predict overall Open RAN and vRAN revenues to improve in 2024 as comparisons with early adopters stabilise and commercial volumes from “wave 2” Open RAN deployments.

Dell’Oro forecasts that Open RAN to represent 7 per cent to 10 per cent of the broader 2024 RAN market and the revenues are projected to account for 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the total RAN by 2028.

Furthermore, he said that there have been no changes to the assumptions supporting the multi-vendor outlook.

Dell’Oro  stats indicate that single-vendor Open RAN is projected to drive the majority of the Open RAN market while multi-vendor Open RAN is projected to represent 5 per cent to 10 per cent of total RAN revenues by 2028.

However, Pongratz said the top three Open RAN and vRAN suppliers in 2023 are not among the top four RAN suppliers. Nevertheless, the vendor dynamics will likely shift as Ericsson and Nokia’s Cloud RAN revenues constitute a greater share of their respective RAN portfolios.

“The overlap ratio between Open RAN and vRAN is expected to evolve over time, influencing the vendor O-RAN/vRAN landscape. By 2028, the majority of Open RAN will also be Open vRAN.”

Most major RAN vendors are now on-board with the movement, he said added that the vRAN chip ecosystem is rapidly improving. Importantly, some of the world’s largest operators are now adopting various aspects of the Open RAN vision.

“Furthermore, several Tier 1 operators are already recognising that 6G will incorporate Open vRAN from the outset. In other words, while 2023 had its challenges, the trajectory of the movement is still forward.”

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