Open RAN Technical Priorities Release 3 is an update of the documents published in June 2021 (Release 1) and March 2022 (Release 2) respectively. It is the result of the work carried out under the MoU on Open RAN signed by Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange S.A., Telefónica S.A., TIM S.p.A. and Vodafone Group Plc.

While Release 1 focused on the main scenarios and technical requirements for each of the building blocks of a multi-vendor RAN, Release 2 mainly focused on intelligence, orchestration, transport and cloud infrastructure, addressing also the energy efficiency goals and targets to support sustainable Open RAN.

This Release 3 has primarily focused on developing further requirements on SMO and RIC while other areas have been significantly enhanced such as Cloud Infrastructure, O-CU/O-DU and O-RU. Moreover, this new release focuses in more detail on security topics and various challenges introduced by the disaggregation promoted by the O-RAN architecture. In particular, the security requirements are now contained within a dedicated section of the MoU Technical Priorities document. Energy efficiency (EE) topics were also analyzed in more detail, with new requirements identified in various streams, for example, Cloud Infrastructure, O-CU/O-DU, RIC use cases and RAN features.

The Technical Priorities are those that the signatories consider priorities for Open RAN solutions. The technical priorities (i) serve as guidance to the RAN supplier industry on where they can focus to accelerate market deployments in Europe, focusing on commercial product availability in the short term, and solution development in the medium term, and (ii) are intended to act as an input into TIP’s OpenRAN Release Framework, which can then be developed with the industry at large to create requirements that can potentially be used as the basis for certification, promoting an efficient supply chain. The Technical Priorities do not represent any alignment on procurement / product selection processes of individual signatories.

The overall objective is to promote a fast pace for the development of competitive Open RAN solutions in Europe, across other regions and ultimately accelerate the global adoption of the technology. The Open RAN MoU Group technical priorities, as with any industry-driven requirements developed through TIP, will evolve over time following the progress of Open RAN standardization, in the respective standardization bodies, and market development of Open RAN solutions.

This Open RAN Technical Priorities Release 2 is an update of the document published in June 2021. It is the result of the work carried out under the MoU on Open RAN signed by Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange S.A., Telefónica S.A., TIM S.p.A. and Vodafone Group Plc. Release 1 focused on the main scenarios and technical requirements for each of the building blocks of a multi-vendor RAN. Release 2 builds on those requirements and focuses on intelligence, orchestration, transport and cloud infrastructure, with the aim of promoting a fully automated and interoperable Open RAN system. The energy efficiency goals and targets to support sustainable Open RAN deployments have also been addressed. It is expected that Open RAN networks will gradually become more energy efficient than traditional RAN, benefiting from Open RAN concepts such as cloudification, disaggregation and native AI. The overall objective is to promote a fast pace for the development of competitive Open RAN solutions in Europe, across other regions and ultimately accelerate the global adoption of the technology. These requirements will evolve over time following the progress of Open RAN standardisation and market development of Open RAN solutions.

The ‘Open RAN Security White Paper’ is the result of the work carried out by the security experts of Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange S.A., Telefónica S.A., TIM S.p.A. and Vodafone Group Plc being the signatories of the Open RAN MoU. This document starts with an introduction of the MoU framework, and the O-RAN Alliance organisation and its activities. It focuses on all security aspects within Open RAN technology, describing the risk-based threat modeling and remediation analysis conducted within the O-RAN Alliance for building an effective Open RAN security architecture. In addition, it provides details on the Open RAN Security Focus Group (SFG) activities, which focuses on developing the four security specifications that are the pillars of the Open RAN security architecture. These include threat modeling, security requirements, protocols and tests.

This “Open RAN Technical Priorities Document” is the result of the work carried out under the MoU on Open RAN signed by Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange S.A., Telefónica S.A., TIM and Vodafone Group Plc. This document offers a comprehensive list of technical requirements that the signatories of the Open RAN MoU consider priorities for Open RAN architecture to guide and foster a competitive open RAN ecosystem, promoting openness and flexibility. It includes the main scenarios and radio configurations targeted for operators’ deployment, providing hardware and software requirements for each of the building blocks of a disaggregated RAN. The overall system relies on open interfaces to allow multi-vendor deployment in a fully interoperable manner, and intelligent radio controllers and orchestration in a cloud-native environment to unleash the potential of a fully automated network. The overall objective is to promote a fast pace for the development of open, virtualized and programmable RAN solutions, and support a timely roll-out of open RAN networks in Europe.