Open RAN Has Become ‘Just a Standard’—and That’s the Win We Needed

There’s a moment in every technology’s life when it stops being a revolution and becomes infrastructure. Open RAN just hit that moment, and the industry’s reaction—a mix of shrugs and relief—tells you everything you need to know. A recent piece on Telecoms.com declared, almost mournfully, that “Open RAN has ended up being just a standard.” If that’s the worst we can say about it, then we should be popping champagne corks, not writing obituaries.

For the better part of a decade, Open RAN has been burdened with expectations that no technology could possibly meet. It was supposed to break the stranglehold of the big three infrastructure vendors, slash costs by an order of magnitude, and usher in an era of software-defined, AI-native networks that would make the legacy RAN look like a quaint antique. The reality, as always, is messier. Open RAN hasn’t delivered on its most radical promises—not yet, and maybe not ever. But what it has done is quietly transform the way operators think about their radio access networks, and that transformation is crystallizing into something far more durable than hype: a standard.

The Standardization Trap (and Triumph)

The word “standard” gets thrown around loosely in telecom. We have standards for everything from 5G NR to SIM cards, and they’re the bedrock of the industry’s interoperability. But when people say Open RAN has become “just a standard,” they’re usually implying a letdown—that it’s been reduced to a set of interface specs, stripped of its disruptive potential. That reading is wrong, and it’s worth unpacking why.

What Open RAN has actually achieved is the normalization of disaggregation. The O-RAN Alliance’s specifications for the fronthaul, midhaul, and management planes have created a common language that allows different vendors’ components to talk to each other. That’s not a small thing; it’s the foundation on which any future innovation will be built. The fact that it’s now considered unremarkable is a sign of success, not failure.

Consider the alternative: a world where every RAN is a proprietary monolith, where swapping out a radio unit means a forklift upgrade of the entire base station. That was the reality before Open RAN, and it was a major reason why operators were locked into long upgrade cycles and high costs. By making the interfaces open and standardized, Open RAN has introduced at least the possibility of choice, even if that choice hasn’t fully materialized in the market yet.

The Dell’Oro Reality Check

A recent piece on RCR Wireless News, drawing on Dell’Oro Group’s analysis, captured the current mood perfectly. The question, as James Blackman put it, is “not whether the RAN can be virtualized, but whether it can be virtualized economically.” That’s the crux. Open RAN’s technical feasibility was never really in doubt; the economics have always been the sticking point.

Dell’Oro’s data points to a market that is growing but not exploding. Open RAN revenue is projected to increase, but it’s not about to displace traditional RAN overnight. The analysts note that operators are taking a pragmatic approach, weighing the benefits of interoperability against the costs of integration, complexity, and performance. This is exactly what you’d expect from a technology that’s moving from the lab to the real world.

The report also highlights that AI-RAN might change the calculus. If operators are going to deploy accelerated compute for network optimization and edge inference anyway, then the economics of virtualized RAN start to look more favorable. But that’s a promise, not a certainty. The industry has seen plenty of those.

The AI-RAN Distraction

Speaking of AI-RAN, it’s impossible to talk about Open RAN’s current state without addressing the elephant in the room. AI-RAN is the shiny new object that has captured the industry’s imagination, with companies like NVIDIA, Nokia, and Ericsson all pushing their own visions. The blog you’re reading has covered this extensively, and there’s no denying that AI-RAN has the potential to be transformative.

But here’s the thing: AI-RAN is not Open RAN. They’re related, but they’re not the same. AI-RAN is about using AI to optimize the RAN, whether that’s through intelligent scheduling, predictive maintenance, or new revenue-generating services. Open RAN is about disaggregating the RAN and opening up interfaces. You can have AI-RAN on a proprietary RAN, and you can have Open RAN without AI. The two are converging, to be sure, but conflating them is a mistake.

The danger is that Open RAN gets co-opted by the AI hype cycle. If operators believe that AI-RAN is the real prize, they might be tempted to skip the hard work of standardizing and integrating Open RAN, and instead just buy an AI-powered proprietary solution from a single vendor. That would be a tragedy, because it would hand the industry back to the very monopolies that Open RAN was supposed to break.

The Pragmatic Promise

The good news is that the industry seems to be resisting that temptation. The conversations I’m hearing, and the ones reflected in the trade press, are increasingly pragmatic. Operators are asking the right questions: What does it cost to integrate? How much power does it consume? What’s the performance hit? These are the questions you ask when you’re serious about deploying something, not when you’re chasing hype.

Take the example of Celona, which has been making waves with its private 5G offerings. The company’s recent launch of its Orion platform, which combines private 5G with Wi-Fi, satellite, and public network support, along with agentic AI, is a perfect illustration of where the industry is heading. Celona is not selling Open RAN per se; it’s selling a converged wireless platform that happens to be built on open principles. The focus is on solving real problems for enterprises—robotics, automation, deterministic connectivity—not on ideology.

The same pragmatism is evident in the broader market. Operators are not making Open RAN decisions based on whether they believe in the philosophy; they’re making them based on whether it makes business sense. And that’s exactly the right approach.

A Standard Is Not a Failure

So, let’s reclaim the phrase “just a standard.” A standard is not a failure; it’s a foundation. The fact that Open RAN has become standardized means that it’s no longer a risky experiment. It’s a viable option that can be evaluated on its merits. That’s a huge win, even if it doesn’t make for exciting headlines.

The history of technology is full of examples where the revolutionaries lost and the standard-setters won. VHS beat Betamax not because it was technically superior, but because it became the standard. USB became ubiquitous because it was standardized, not because it was the most elegant solution. Open RAN is following the same path. It may not be the radical, world-changing force that its most fervent advocates hoped for, but it’s becoming the boring, reliable infrastructure that the industry actually needs.

The Road Ahead

The next few years will be critical. As 6G research ramps up, there’s an opportunity to bake Open RAN principles into the next generation of mobile networks from the ground up. The work being done on AI-RAN, if it’s done right, could provide the economic justification for virtualization that has been missing so far. And the ongoing standardization efforts, both in O-RAN and other bodies, will continue to lower the barriers to entry.

But none of this will happen automatically. It will require sustained effort from operators, vendors, and standards bodies to keep pushing for openness and interoperability. The temptation to cut corners, to lock in proprietary advantage, will always be there. The industry has to resist it.

The Bottom Line

Open RAN has ended up being just a standard. And that’s the best thing that could have happened to it. It means the technology has matured to the point where it can be evaluated on its own terms, without the burden of unrealistic expectations. It means operators can make rational decisions based on cost, performance, and integration complexity, rather than on ideology.

So let’s stop mourning the loss of the revolution and start celebrating the arrival of the standard. The revolution was always going to be messy; the standard is what will actually change the industry. And that’s a victory worth having.

Sources

• Open RAN has ended up being just a standard - Telecoms.com
• Tuesday (telco diary) | About open RAN, c/o Dell’Oro… - RCR Wireless News
• Celona expands private 5G to meet the rise of physical AI - Light Reading
• Celona launches Orion agentic wireless platform built for physical AI and robotics - The Robot Report