Indian telecom companies have leaned towards O-RAN since it reduces their capital costs and offers better performance. It frees the countries from the monopoly grip of traditional gear makers such as Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and ZTE. Rautken of Japan has adopted O-RAN powered 5G network whereas the rest of the global players have favoured traditional gear makers.

O-RAN will evolve, and mature in a couple of years. It can scale up by 2023 – 24. It is a matter of speculation as to what percentage of operators adopt O-RAN globally.

O-RAN is based on open architecture. It disaggregates hardware and software. A telecom operator has the freedom of choice to buy off-the-shelf from various vendors and can optimise his costs. Historically, telecom operators have been using proprietary hardware and software integrated by the traditional gear maters. There were lock-in periods and annual maintenance contracts.

O-RAN is virtualised. It essentially means many of the radio access functions done by the hardware would now be done by the software. It will reduce costs, say 30-40 per cent.

There are 5G base stations. There should be availability of chips with high processing capability off-the-shelf to run these base stations. These base stations are like mini-servers. They have lower power consumption. These support virtualisation of the network. Intel intends to make Sapphire range of processors by 2023. Even Qualcom is expected to release its chip for 5G base stations.

There are O-RAN software companies, say Altiostar and Mavenir who are doing software testing. Reliance has aquired the US-based Radisys which is experimenting with O-RAN.

Japanse MIMO radios will be used in hardware space. Indigenous radios could become available in near future.

Indian IT players could play a role of integrators to put together the software and hardware of O-RAN network.

No, doubt, it is a disruptive technology. It is to be seen whether the present gear makers modify their model and offer open architecture.