Open RAN initiatives have come a long way.
Since the inception of the xRAN Forum in 2016, and its subsequent merger with C-RAN alliance two years later to form the O-RAN alliance, the industry and ecosystem have made significant progress in defining open RAN architecture and deploying initial use cases. Starting with the adoption of the O-RAN alliance’s open fronthaul specifications (a.k.a. 7-2x split), the industry subsequently evolved its focus to making open Centralized Unit (CU), open Distributed Unit (DU) and RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) a reality.