Open RAN Changes the Game for Mobile Networks
Advanced orchestration, analytics and OSS are the keys to widespread industry adoption.
The proprietary hardware commonly used in traditional RAN deployments has greatly restricted the ability of operators to adapt to the demands of the 5G era. Surges in mobile usage and increasingly diversified connectivity options and traffic patterns have combined to push RAN networks to their limit. Open vRAN brings fast time-to-market, multi-vendor designs, dynamic capacity scaling, expanded service coverage and improved user experience, yet many operators have remained reluctant to widely adopt the technology because while the benefits are considerable, so are the challenges.
A New OSS for a New Kind of Network
Disaggregation requires new methods of orchestration, optimization and management for complex networks, which often include legacy hardware from brownfield deployments. The growing popularity of Network as a Service and the demands of network slicing for greater resource management, automation and coordinated orchestration across domains will further complicate Open vRAN and increase costs.
Open vRAN requires a powerful OSS solution with a host of new capabilities to streamline processes and keep TCO low. The solution must be able to automate design, deployment and lifecycle management events with physical, virtual and cloud-native functions. It will also need to employ open APIs, standards and DevOps tools to accommodate the multi-vendor ecosystem and simplify onboarding, interoperability and upgrades. Finally, it will have to support both 4G and 5G for RAN hardware, such as RUs and gNBs, to create a seamless evolution to 5G and dynamic network slicing.
Learn more about Netcracker Open vRAN Domain Orchestration, and read this report from GlobalData, which discusses how the solution brings together the orchestration, OSS and analytics functions needed to fully automate all aspects of the RAN domain from planning and design to activation, assurance and optimization.