Dell’Oro revises global Open RAN outlook upwards

Stronger-than-expected O-RAN progress in North America is behind the revision, says Dell’Oro

The Dell’Oro Group published a recent report that the firm said shows that the Open RAN movement has “come a long way in just a few years” and is accelerating faster than initially expected. In fact, the group has revised Open RAN expectations upward to reflect the higher baseline, and now projects that Open RAN will account for 15% to 20% of global RAN by 2027. Dell’Oro also expects Open RAN revenue to top $1 billion by that same year, with macros accounting for roughly 90% of O-RAN capex.

The firm says that stronger-than-expected O-RAN progress in North America is behind the revision, and that moving forward, this region — along with the Asia Pacific region — will be the “primary growth vehicles” over the next five years.

“The message that we have communicated for some time now with the early adopters embracing the movement and the early majority operator still concerned about performance and cost parity with Open RAN relative to proprietary RAN has not changed,” said Stefan Pongratz, vice president and analyst at the Dell’Oro Group. “Even with the higher starting point, it is more salient than even to factor in the vastly different adoption curves across the greenfields, the leading brownfields in North America and Asia Pacific, and the rest of the world,” continued Pongratz.

While the O-RAN foecast has rising in some regions, Dell’Oro did report that it has revised the outlook downward in the Middle East & Africa, the Caribbean and in Latin America, as well as some parts of the Asia Pacific.

Comments from key Open RAN players have supported Dell’Oro’s findings. Previously, for instance, Mavenir’s Senior Vice President of Business Development John Baker commented that “Open RAN is really gaining momentum in the industry,” while on the operator side, Vodafone has set a target of deploying the disaggregated radio systems in 30% of its European footprint by the end of the decade.