Open RAN Progress Report: Major Milestones and What’s Next in the Transformation Journey

This blog provides an update as of October 2024 on Ericsson’s progress in promoting the key technologies, common specifications, and collaborations that are the foundation for Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) architecture.

Over the past several years, there have been tremendous global efforts to advance Open RAN. The benefits of a disaggregated network architecture are clear: greater flexibility, interoperability, and innovation. Open RAN will bring significant value to the entire mobile ecosystem, including communications service providers (CSPs), software and hardware suppliers, consumers, enterprise businesses, and the developers who innovate on top of mobile networks. The ecosystem is on a journey to industrialize and scale Open RAN to realize its many benefits, and the US is leading the charge.

Ericsson believes the success of Open RAN will stand on three major pillars: virtualized cloud architecture (separating hardware from software), automation (creating new automation architecture to enable innovation across a multi-vendor ecosystem), and interfaces (standardizing additional interfaces to foster hardware vendor diversity).

We have been investing in all three of these foundational areas through product development and R&D, contributions to industry standards, and investment in interoperability test beds. Ericsson has been one of the top two contributors to the O-RAN Alliance since its inception. This foundational work is essential to support a global, interoperable ecosystem of hardware and software. In addition, we have been leading partnerships with other innovative companies that will achieve interoperability, thus giving service providers confidence to deploy broadly.

Below, we describe Ericsson’s Open RAN progress and key milestones, along with our partners and customers—specifically AT&T’s network transformation, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) funded Advanced Communications Cooperative Research and Development (ACCoRD) lab for interoperability testing and verification, Open Fronthaul, and the development of a robust software ecosystem for innovation in the RAN.

Deploying Open RAN networks in the US

Ericsson has been making constant strides in its Open RAN journey, especially in the past two years, deploying virtualized components in live commercial networks for two of the largest service providers in the country.

One of the milestones in Ericsson’s Open RAN journey was Verizon’s deployment of Ericsson’s first commercial 5G Cloud RAN solution, consisting of virtualized Central Unit (vCU) and virtualized Distributed Unit (vDU), in a cell site at the end of 2022. Another milestone occurred in February of this year, when a successful Cloud RAN call was made on AT&T’s live 5G network south of Dallas, Texas. This was only two months after announcing its transformation plan with Ericsson. While work is continuing on AT&T’s network transformation, AT&T executives are communicating the company’s vision. In a recent fireside chat, the leaders of Ericsson and AT&T outlined their ongoing collaboration to build an open, programmable network and highlighted the transformational impact of this architecture for the future. AT&T executives noted the mission-critical aspect of the network, especially as an enabler for first responders who rely on AT&T’s FirstNet.

To enable these and continuing milestones delivering robust solutions to the market, Ericsson is investing in a full stack ecosystem to deliver open fronthaul (OFH) on virtualized RAN (vRAN), enabling third party suppliers.

Figure 1: Ericsson Cloud RAN ecosystem October 2024

US Government funded NOFO-1 ACCoRD lab

Ericsson is a founding partner in the Acceleration of Compatibility and Commercialization for Open RAN Deployments (ACCoRD) lab, funded in part by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Wireless Innovation Fund. This neutral environment will test interoperability between distributed units (DUs) and radio units (RUs) from different suppliers using standards-based testing specifications. Through the ACCoRD lab, Ericsson is delivering our purpose-built baseband and virtualized centralized unit (CU)/distributed unit (DU) in preparation for Interoperability Testing (IOT) with third-party radios. The figure below shows the ACCoRD lab configuration of open fronthaul interoperability testing (OFH IOT) between Ericsson gear (that is, purpose-built baseband, vCU/vDU) and third-party RUs.

Figure 2: Open Fronthaul IOT in ACCoRD Lab

Since the ACCoRD facility was announced in February 2024, the lab partners, under the leadership of AT&T and Verizon, have made significant progress in installing hardware and developing ways of working. This lab is a significant step in bringing open networks to reality.

Ericsson portfolio – ready for the next generation OFH standard

Ericsson already supports the higher layer split (HLS) architecture and related open interfaces, including F1, E1, X2, and Xn. Our state-of-the-art 5G factory in Lewisville, Texas, continues to manufacture the latest generation of baseband and radios for US customers that are prepared for OFH. We have already deployed over one million radios that are hardware-ready for the next generation of OFH technology, recently finalized by the O-RAN Alliance as OFH with uplink performance improvement (ULPI) capability. To further strengthen the Open RAN portfolio, Ericsson is adding OFH Category B with ULPI to our Cloud RAN and selected massive multiple input multiple output (M-MIMO) radios, starting in 2025. As for Category A, it is being incorporated into our latest generation of purpose-built RAN, Cloud RAN, and enhanced Common Public Radio Interface (eCPRI)-capable radios, also starting in 2025.

Management and orchestration, a massive innovation opportunity

One of the biggest opportunities from Open RAN will be the innovation and software ecosystem built with the service management and orchestration (SMO) – a new function that enables software applications to interact with the RAN. Enter Ericsson Intelligent Automation Platform (EIAP), our implementation of the O-RAN Alliance-specified SMO and more, announced in 2021. EIAP provides open programmability for multi-vendor, purpose-built, and vRAN networks. It includes the Non-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller (Non-RT RIC) and the Non-RT RIC Applications (rApps) to deliver improved network performance, enhanced customer experience, and substantial operational savings through RAN programmability. To stay aligned with the Open RAN paradigm, the EIAP supports the open management interfaces of R1, A1, O1, OFH M-Plane, and O2.

Ericsson has invested heavily in EIAP, not only in the function itself but also in the support required to grow the ecosystem. With our public Software Development Kit (SDK), EIAP today has an ecosystem of over 25 members, more than 1100 developers, and a collection of over 50 rApps, with more than 25 of them coming from independent software vendors (ISVs). Ericsson has recently announced the availability of the industry-first dedicated rApp Directory. This directory will connect ecosystem members to enable CSPs to accelerate the introduction of rApps for automating RAN management and optimization. It will also allow users to contact the creators of the rApps to understand more about their features and capabilities related to improving network performance.

The figure below shows the current EIAP ecosystem, highlighting the growth of multi-vendor interoperability over rApps. The capabilities of the third-party rApps span all aspects of network management and optimization, including use cases for national defense.

Figure 3: EIAP Ecosystem October 2024

Enabling Open RAN global success

Ericsson has embarked on a journey to deliver an industrialized Open RAN solution that lowers the barriers for new entrants to engage CSPs across Open RAN and even in existing traditional networks. The Open RAN ecosystem will help CSPs to drive down the cost of their business (from both a capital expenditure and operational expenditure perspective) and build a platform for innovation. In addition to building Open RAN products and contributing to relevant standard organizations (for example, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and the O-RAN Alliance), Ericsson is also focused on developing an ecosystem of innovations to deliver a high-performing and cost-efficient Open RAN at scale.

At the FYUZ event in mid-November in Dublin, Ericsson will bring together customers, partners, and other industry leaders to review not only where we have been but also where we are going as an industry. With the growth in the hardware and software ecosystems, we see a bright future for the service providers deploying this new architecture, bringing programmability and innovation to their networks, and also for the many hardware and software suppliers who have growing opportunities in the RAN.