Patrick Lopez, founder and CEO of Core Analysis, joins the podcast to discuss the state of the open radio access network (RAN) market in North America. Lopez explains how success in the market could look different for a variety of operators, and why considering the timing for deploying open RAN is critical.
"Open RAN is a journey and you have to pick the right window. For some, it was going from 4G to 5G, [for others] it was going from 5G NSA to 5G SA," he says, referring to 3GPP's non-standalone (NSA)and standalone (SA) 5G standards. "... Right now we're at the beginning of open RAN in North America. We're seeing some implementation but not the level of maturity we've seen in other markets."
Lopez also discusses Dish Network's approach to open RAN, how both greenfield and brownfield operators can benefit from cloud-native networks, and different approaches to the RAN intelligent controller (RIC).
Click on the caption button for a lightly edited transcript.
Here are a few topics we cover:
State of the open RAN market in North America (04:40)
How new RAN approaches can provide operational efficiencies and revenue opportunities for service providers (09:01)
Differences between non-real-time RICs and near-real-time RICs (13:58)
Related:Why open RAN needs flexible hardware acceleration