Home > Communication Service Provider Solutions > Open RAN > White Papers > Accelerating Open RAN Systems: Building Better 5G with the Dell Open RAN Accelerator Card > Speeding up the future
For some time, the telecommunications industry has focused on the arrival of 5G. And while the number of 5G connections worldwide doubled in 2022, most mobile communications still take place on 4G and legacy networks. This trend will continue for the foreseeable future.1[1] Though it may be years before self-driving cars and augmented reality glasses are ubiquitous, 5G technologies are taking hold in the radio access network (RAN)—specifically with virtualized RAN (vRAN) and Open RAN solutions. Last year, for example, analysts at the Dell’Oro Group increased their Open RAN revenue projections by 50%—from $10 billion in 2025 to $15 billion—based on higher-than-anticipated interest worldwide in Open RAN.2[2]
The appeal of Open RAN and vRAN systems is easy to understand since it gives communication service providers (CSPs) more control and flexibility over their RAN deployments. Open RAN eliminates the current proprietary solutions and standardizes the interfaces to enable multivendor solutions. Thus, CSPs can choose the vendors that they use in their RAN. However, until now, Open RAN systems have underperformed traditional RAN solutions, which has slowed adoption. Only when this performance gap is closed will Open RAN be globally adopted and hit the projected revenue projections.
Dell is working with hardware manufacturers (such as Marvell Technology) and the CSP community to re-imagine Open RAN solutions to enhance performance. Closing the current performance gap will eventually enable Open RAN to surpass the performance of traditional RAN. In this white paper, we examine what this new Open RAN technology looks like and how it helps telecommunications accelerate the adoption of 5G in the future while reducing costs and driving revenue today.