radisys.com 21
Radisys Series — Who Disaggregated My RAN?
eBook
Chapter 5:
Tailor-made RAN. But Who is Stitching it Together?
The arrival of RAN disaggregation and the corresponding standards for open interfaces, hardware, software
decoupling, network intelligence and automation has led to the expansion of a diverse ecosystem of RAN component
players, specifically Radio Unit (RU) vendors. While this ecosystem allows operators to pick from an array of solutions
that meet their specific needs, there is one significant challenge that still remains for an operator planning to
deploy multi-vendor Open RAN solutions: integrating these components from multiple vendors and making them
deployment ready.
Operators have a keen interest in making sure that not only do these open components work with each other, but
that they are also able to interoperate with their existing network infrastructure. In an old traditional system, an
operator would buy from one to two vendors. If the integration process did not go well, they could go with the
other vendor and implement a duplicate strategy. This turnkey approach afforded them some flexibility in their
networks, but as we saw in our discussion about fronthaul, might have closed proprietary interfaces. However,
operators only had one or two vendors to deal with. This "one throat to choke" approach afforded operators a
certain level of confidence that any problems could be resolved.
Now, as the disaggregated RAN ecosystem has grown, the breadth of choices also means that operators have more
vendors and products to coordinate. While this is a challenge, there are a number of existing elements in place that
prevent this from becoming a roadblock in deploying Open RAN solutions. Let's look at the different dimensions of
this challenge in more detail.
Open RAN System Integration Is Not Just Another Telco System Integration
The telco industry has been flush with quite a few system integration players catering to operators' various network
and application level integration needs. They take care of network deployment and network management, and of
managing data coming from the network. However, system integration skills alone are not enough when dealing
with Open RAN system integration. Integration of radio access network components is indeed very challenging.
