O-RAN or Open-Radio Access Network is a novel approach to disaggregate the RAN both horizontally and vertically. In the east-west direction, the disaggregation is characterized by: ‘Fronthaul’, ‘Midhaul’ and ‘Backhaul’ interfaces for a flexible reach and reactivity, and in the north-south direction it enables deploying RAN protocol stack in a containerized fashion for scaling and management.
This slicing-and-dicing has enabled newer players such as silicon vendors and cloud computing platform providers to innovate along with the incumbents. To move the technology vector towards self-driving cars, remote surgery or smart-farming, O-RAN promises to accelerate innovation cycles for the incumbents, encourage greenfield investment by new players and provide an opportunity space for engineering services such as interoperability, conformance, verification and orchestration.
With HCLTech’s 5G strategy, critical investments are being driven to enhance HCLTech’s play in the 5G O-RAN ecosystem. As the Radio Access Network (RAN) gets opened or disaggregated, there is plenty of scope for new players to provide radio focused or controller focused solutions HCLTech’s 5G Strategy focuses on providing services that will help both vendors and CSPs to accelerate their deployment and improve RoI margins.