Open RAN Technical Priorities Release 3

Open RAN Technical Priorities Release 3 is an update of the documents published in June 2021 (Release 1) and March 2022 (Release 2) respectively. It is the result of the work carried out under the MoU on Open RAN signed by Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange S.A., Telefónica S.A., TIM S.p.A. and Vodafone Group Plc.

While 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.

This Release 3 has primarily focused on developing further requirements on SMO and RIC while other areas have been significantly enhanced such as Cloud Infrastructure, O-CU/O-DU and O-RU. Moreover, this new release focuses in more detail on security topics and various challenges introduced by the disaggregation promoted by the O-RAN architecture. In particular, the security requirements are now contained within a dedicated section of the MoU Technical Priorities document. Energy efficiency (EE) topics were also analyzed in more detail, with new requirements identified in various streams, for example, Cloud Infrastructure, O-CU/O-DU, RIC use cases and RAN features.

The Technical Priorities are those that the signatories consider priorities for Open RAN solutions. The technical priorities (i) 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, and (ii) are intended to act as an input into TIP’s OpenRAN Release Framework, which can then be developed with the industry at large to create requirements that can potentially be used as the basis for certification, promoting an efficient supply chain. The Technical Priorities do not represent any alignment on procurement / product selection processes of individual signatories.

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, as with any industry-driven requirements developed through TIP, will evolve over time following the progress of Open RAN standardization, in the respective standardization bodies, and market development of Open RAN solutions.