Open RAN’s runaway promise: Will the train turn back?

Despite early momentum, Open RAN is slowing under market, technical, and geopolitical pressures—can 6G bring it back on track?

- PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

‘Unstoppable’, ‘Bullet Train Explosion’, ‘Runaway Train’, ‘Last Passenger’, and the home-grown wonder ‘The Burning Train’— all of these are movies centred around trains spiralling out of control. With a brake failure, a malfunctioning system, or a dramatic rule about maintaining minimum speed, the chaos unfolds. Add in fire, a suicidal driver, a bomb, and an angry lover, and it makes for a quintessential train thriller.

What stands out in these films is the eventual solution— someone manages to decouple something. By that, we mean something heavy: a compartment, a machinery module, a cargo coach, or even a section of track. That is the cinematic breakthrough—the idea that even a fast-moving, complex, engineering-heavy system can be opened up and reconfigured. It is thrilling to discover that a running train can be decoupled. Jaw-dropping, indeed.

No wonder we were so excited about the very idea of Open RAN. As a concept, it was as thrilling and as new as taking out parts and joining new ones on a moving train. Is that not what telcos deal with as well? A moving train of network availability, new revenue goals, required speed of uptime, and the threat of low margins or network failure. The thrill was well-warranted.

It involved opening up the complex system known as the Radio Access Network (RAN). A RAN primarily comprises Central Units (CUs), Distributed Units (DUs), and Radio Units (RUs), which were, so far, proprietary and came from a single big vendor. When Open RAN took its first breath, it became a whirlwind of hope, as telco operators could now use different RAN equipment parts from various vendors.