NEW DELHI: Market research firm Dell’Oro Group has downward revised the Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) cumulative revenues projection by 5-10% in the five-year forecast period till 2027 owing to hesitancy in the industry about these next-generation architectures. The new projection follows three years of Open RAN revenues accelerating at a significantly faster pace.
The analysis is being complicated by mixed adoption of Open RAN across the greenfield and brownfield operators, the research firm said, adding that greenfield and early adopter brownfield deployments are approaching maturity.
“The reality the industry is now facing is that it will take some time for the other segments to match and offset the more stable trends with the early adopters,” it said.
Dell’Oro Group, however, noted that within a few years, Open RAN already comprises a mid single-digit share of the broader Radio Access Network (RAN) market.
Nevertheless, the research firm underscored that Open RAN revenues are projected to account for more than 15% of global RAN by 2027.
“We can think of this revision more as a near-term calibration than a change in the long-term growth trajectory,” said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President and Analyst at the Dell’Oro Group. “This journey of “re-shaping” the RAN was never expected to be smooth and many challenges remain. Even so, our long-term position has not changed. We continue to believe that Open RAN is here to stay, and the growing support by the incumbent suppliers bolsters this thesis, “ Pongratz added.According to Dell’Oro Group, the European operators are ahead of the rest of the world in terms of announcing Open RAN targets, but they have been “more cautious” with deploying Open RAN, focusing on building out 5G using traditional RAN.
It added that the baseline forecast, which assumes more delays in Europe, is for the European Open RAN market to surpass $1 billion by 2027 and eventually be one of the leading markets from an Open RAN/RAN perspective.
