Research Shows O-RAN Investment to Reach $39B

A new report by Juniper Research shows that operator investment into Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN) will reach $39 billion globally by 2029, surging to $11 billion annually by 2029.

According to the July 29 report – How can Operators Maximise the Impact of O-RAN in 2025 – investment into O-RAN currently sits at $2 billion annually for 2024.

“This culmination of nearly $40 billion of global investment into AI network automation by 2029 will be driven by the need to cater for increasing cellular connections and data,” the report reads.

According to Juniper Research, O-RAN is a version of the RAN which supports multi-vendor deployments and enables operators to expand AI RAN deployments. RAN is the technology that provides connectivity between end connections and network cores.

North America, Western Europe, and China are currently the leading developers, contributors, and implementers of O-RAN technology and standards, the report notes. This has been driven by innovation and investment from operators and O-RAN vendors, such as AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Mavenir, Fujitsu, and Rakuten.

Additionally, governments in these regions have accelerated O-RAN market development by providing additional funding. For example, the U.S. government allocated $1.5 billion for open network development, with its CHIPS and Science Act in 2022.

The research highlights that cellular data usage will more than double over the next four years, owing to the expansion of new 5G broadband services.

To enable telecommunications networks to efficiently process this increased data, the report identified AI-based traffic steering as a crucial service enabled by O-RAN.

Traffic steering enables operators to maximize the efficiency of networks through the automated routing of cellular traffic to maximize network resources.

“Operators must leverage AI-based traffic steering to improve connectivity services, such as enhanced mobile broadband, with network traffic generated by these connections being given priority steering to the base station offering the lowest latency to maximise the value proposition for users,” the report’s research author Alex Webb said.