Europe's largest telecom operators have called on more official support from the EU for developing the Open RAN ecosystem. Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, TIM and Vodafone released a report commissioned from Analysys Mason that found Europe may be falling behind in the emerging Open RAN market to countries such as the US and Japan, which are investing more quickly.
Entitled ‘Building an Open RAN ecosystem for Europe’, the report shows that Europe has 13 major Open RAN players, versus 57 for the rest of the world. However, many European players are at an early stage of development and have not yet secured commercial Open RAN contracts, whilst vendors from other regions are moving ahead.
This may be down to more support in the US, Japan and other countries for Open RAN. The US has earmarked more than USD 1.5 billion to fund Open RAN, and Japan offers financial incentives and tax benefits for companies which develop, supply and deploy related equipment, the report said.
In the EU, Germany recently announced several tens of millions of euros to back Open RAN projects, but few other countries have dedicated efforts to support the new industry. As a result, "the European Union as a whole is falling woefully short of providing the necessary support for Open RAN, putting at risk the future viability of a European ecosystem able to compete with other regions in the world, ” said Caroline Gabriel, Research Director at Analysys Mason.
The report makes five policy recommendations that could help Europe moved forward. These include greater political support for Open RAN, a 'European Alliance on Next Generation Communication infrastructures' similar to the EU innovation projects for cloud and semiconductors, funding and tax incentives for start-ups and vendors developing the technology, promoting European leadership in setting the relevant standards, and working with international partners to promote supply-chain diversity and security.
The telecom operators already have an alliance in place to support the development of Open RAN equipment and share best practices. Working through the Telecom Infra Project, they published earlier this year technical specifications, and all five members are engaged in trials of the technology.
