Airtel, Jio say OpenRAN yet to mature but Vodafone Idea sees deployments growing

NEW DELHI: Open Radio Access Network or Open RAN, pitched as an alternate technology to mix-and-match software and hardware components and diversify the ecosystem in a bid to challenge the might of gear making giants Ericsson, Nokia, and Huawei, seems to have been so far unsuccessful in convincing Indian telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea.

“For us at Bharti Airtel, we look at the performance, TCO (total cost of ownership, interworking or IoDT (interoperability and device testing) while doing Open RAN evaluation,” said Saurabh Mittal, VP–Standards and Industry Ecosystem at Airtel, in a panel discussion on the first of the day of the India Mobile Congress 2023.