Ask in the abstract, and most operators will say they favor opening up closed technologies. More participants brings more innovation, competitive pricing pressure, what could be bad? Well, more players can also mean more complexity, more complicated interdependencies, more opportunity for something to go wrong. That can be especially worrying when it comes to complex, mission-critical radio access network (RAN) technologies that have been closed and proprietary for years.
So, do the benefits of opening up the RAN outweigh the risks? The industry is about to find out.
