Dell'Oro says Open RAN is shifting toward interface standardization
Dell'Oro Group says Open RAN is entering a new phase, led by growing Open Fronthaul adoption and diverging outlooks for Cloud RAN and multi-vendor RAN.
Dell'Oro Group said Open RAN is entering a new phase, with Open Fronthaul gaining momentum as Cloud RAN and multi-vendor RAN follow different paths based on technology readiness and economics.
The assessment came in a Dell'Oro Group release distributed by PR Newswire on Aug. 11, 2026, tied to the company’s August 2026 Open RAN Report.
Stefan Pongratz, vice president of RAN Market Research at Dell'Oro Group, said Open RAN is increasingly about interface standardization rather than supplier diversification. He said Open Fronthaul is well positioned to become the preferred interface among major non-Chinese RAN suppliers, although most deployments will still use radios and basebands from the same vendor.
Dell'Oro also said Cloud RAN adoption will depend more heavily on the economics of merchant compute and accelerators versus purpose-built RAN platforms. That view separates Cloud RAN from the broader Open RAN category, where operators may pursue standardized interfaces without necessarily shifting to fully mixed-vendor systems.
The release said the Open RAN Advanced Research Report includes a five-year forecast covering Open RAN, Virtualized RAN and Cloud RAN segments. It also covers multi-vendor and single-vendor Open RAN, purpose-built RAN and proprietary RAN, along with regional projections and quarterly vendor data.
Dell'Oro Group described itself in the release as a market research firm focused on telecommunications, security, networks and data center markets. The company said the report is available for purchase by email inquiry.
Sources
Editorial note: This article was prepared with AI assistance and includes source attribution for reader review.
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