North America Seen Leading Open RAN Movement Through 2028

The North American market is being forecasted as the brightest light in the Open RAN market through 2028, according to a research report issued by Dell’Oro Group on Aug. 8.

According to the report, North America ranked as the largest Open RAN region globally in 2023, and is “expected to lead the broader Open RAN movement throughout the forecast period” ending in 2028.

Open RAN (Open Radio Access Network) architecture is a nonproprietary version of the radio access network that allows interoperability between wireless network equipment made by different equipment vendors and has been gaining in market share in recent years as wireless service providers have moved away from using strictly proprietary RAN architecture.

Sizing up the global market, Dell’Oro said that by 2028 it estimates Open RAN will account for more than 25 percent of the total RAN market. The firm said that Cloud RAN will account for a 20-25 percent share, and that Multi-vendor RAN will total less than ten percent of the market. The research firm said those estimates are little changed since its previous projections issued in February.

Within major global regions, the report says that Europe will account for 15 to 20 percent of worldwide Open RAN revenues by 2028.

And outside of the China market, Open RAN is projected to total “30 to 40 percent of the revenues by 2028,” the report says.

“Broader Open RAN movement has come a long way in just a few years, but the results have been mixed,” the Dell’Oro report states.

“Open RAN is happening, but this vision that Open RAN will significantly change the vendor dynamics is fading,” commented Stefan Pongratz, who is vice president of RAN market research at Dell’Oro Group.

“With most of the leading RAN suppliers now committed to the latest O-RAN fronthaul interfaces, the question now is more about the timing and the adoption curve for the various RAN segments,” he said.

Commenting more generally on the Open RAN market, Pongratz said, “one of the key drivers with the shift from proprietary RAN toward Open RAN is that it should ideally address the competitive landscape and increase the likelihood of a market concentration trend reversal.”

“Per Dell’Oro Group estimates, the worldwide Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) has advanced nearly 50% over the past 19 years,” he said, adding, “preliminary estimates suggest the HHI index for the 2019 RAN market topped 4000 in both North America and China, reflecting the state of the competitive dynamics in these highly concentrated markets.”