Open RAN: European growth at 26% by 2030

Whilst APAC is the fastest-growing (and biggest) market for Open RAN with a predicted 35% market share in 2030 ($11.5bn), the European market isn’t lagging too far behind at 26% growth according to news outlet BusinessWire. Below we highlight the main Open RAN updates from across Europe. But before we discuss that, it’s worth noting how Open RAN is expected to grow across the globe over the next decade. As mentioned, APAC is expected to dominate the Open RAN market which Japan is leading the charge, however, it’s anticipated that China will take the number one spot by the end of the decade. North America is expected to have a growth rate of 31%.  

5G is expected to dominate the Open RAN market for the foreseeable future, according to BusinessWire, with Total Addressable Market (TAM) of $22B in 2030 and a growth rate of 52% which is significantly greater than the 31% growth rate for 4G by 2030. 

GERMANY 

Deutsche Telekom wants a multivendor rollout Open RAN to be a commercial option by 2023 with NEC and Mavenir to be possible participants. However, given that the equipment currently used for their 5G network is supplied by Huawei and Ericsson, this would mean either replacing this equipment or running two networks concurrently (which is unlikely).  

TURKEY 

US firm Parallel Wireless along with Türk Telekom and Juniper Networks are collaborating to deliver a multi-vendor Open RAN initiative to deliver state-of-the-art broadband communications within Turkey. Yusuf Kirac, CTO, Türk Telekom, said, “Within the scope of these collaborations, we continue our development, tests, and productization of Open RAN. Our collaboration with Parallel Wireless and Juniper Networks on this initiative is extremely important throughout our Open RAN journey, and we are confident that this collaboration will be a crucial step towards enabling state-of-the-art 4G and 5G broadband communications and new applications." This rollout will see a recruitment drive for jobs in telecoms engineers.  

UNITED KINGDOM 

Vodafone opened Europe’s first dedicated R&D centre to help the operator design its own Open RAN chips, reports telecomstechnews.com. Vodafone is investing €225 million over five years to its dedicated Open RAN R&D centre. Also, Vodafone has created the UK’s first live 5% Open RAN site made up of the following according to telecoms tech news. 

• Samsung: Virtualised Radio Access Network (vRAN) Solutions, as well as technical, product, and integration support.
• Dell: Common Off The Shelf (COTS) servers.
• Intel: Optimised solutions, including Intel Xeon processors, workload acceleration, and connectivity.
• Wind River: Providing its studio solution for managing containerised Open RAN CU/DU workloads, automation, orchestration, and lifecycle management of network functions.
• Capgemini and Keysight Technologies: Testing and integration services to ensure interoperability of the multi-vendor ecosystem.

With lots of exciting activity happening, resulting in more jobs in Open RAN becoming available, it’s great to see the telecommunications industry developing and growing in 2022. For information about the Open RAN recruitment market, contact a member of the First Point Group team.