The update is the result of the work carried out by the European carriers under the a previously signed Open RAN MoU
European carriers Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, TIM and Vodafone Group have released an update on the technical priorities of Open RAN, the telcos said in a joint statement.
The update is the result of the work carried out by these European carriers under the previous Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Open RAN they had previously signed.
The Open RAN Technical Priorities Release 4 is an update of the previous releases published in June 2021, March 2022 and April 2023, they said.
Each release has prioritized different aspects of Open RAN development. Release 1 focused on the main scenarios and technical requirements for each of the building blocks of a multi-vendor RAN. Release 2 mainly focused on intelligence, orchestration, transport and cloud infrastructure, addressing also the energy efficiency goals and targets to support sustainable Open RAN. Meanwhile, Release 3 mainly focused on developing requirements on SMO and RIC building blocks and to enhance other areas such as Cloud infrastructure, O-CU/O-DU and O-RU, addressing also the security topic to support more secure Open RAN.
The partners noted that the fourth release of the technical priorities has primarily focused on developing further requirements on SMO especially related to AI/ML framework, interworking with traditional RAN and slicing management. Moreover, this new release focuses in more detail on the RAN hardware acceleration topic and various challenges related to both the look-aside and in-line acceleration card models. In particular, the RAN HW acceleration requirements are now contained within a dedicated section of the MoU Technical Priorities document.
“The technical priorities are those that the signatories consider priorities for Open RAN solutions. The technical priorities serve as guidance to the RAN supplier industry on where they can focus to accelerate market deployments in Europe, focusing on commercial product availability in the short term, and solution development in the medium term,” the statement reads.
“The overall objective is to promote a fast pace for the development of competitive Open RAN solutions in Europe, across other regions and ultimately accelerate the global adoption of the technology. The Open RAN MoU Group technical priorities will evolve over time following the progress of Open RAN standardization, in the respective standardization bodies, and the market development of Open RAN solutions,” it added.
