The Economic Benefits of Open RAN Technology

The Radio Access Network (RAN) is the largest and most important part in both physical and financial terms of a mobile operator’s network. Physically, it extends to every individual radio that is running in an operator’s network. Financially, it consumes, proportionally, more of the operator’s expenses in deploying the network than any other portion.

Historically, RANs comprised tightly integrated physical radio and baseband processing elements, which we reference as physical RANs (Table 1). More recently, baseband architectures have evolved into a modular design framework that deconstructs the Baseband Unit (BBU) into two closely related elements known as the Centralized Unit and the Distributed Unit. The total 5G gNodeB architecture now breaks down into:

• Radio Units (RU)

• Centralized baseband processing units (CU)

• Distributed baseband processing units (DU) and,

• Network transport infrastructures providing connectivity between RU, DU, CU, and the mobile packet core.1

Using this modular, disaggregated framework allows for greater flexibility in deployments for mobile operators than the prior tightly integrated designs have allowed. For this reason, comparing the relative efficiency and economics of the various deployment models for 5G operations is a critical planning task.

To put the impact of the overall RAN costs in perspective, the TCO of the RAN represents approximately 70%−80% of the TCO for an average mobile network. Thus, achieving meaningful cost savings in the RAN represents the best opportunity to reduce overall network costs.