GOAL: How is O-RAN beneficial? **** O-RAN ADVANTAGE The advantages of O-RAN (Open RAN) are manifold. An open environment means an expanded ecosystem, with more vendors providing the building blocks. In O-RAN, there is more innovation and more options for the operators. They can also add new services. Some of the other benefits include more market competition and customer choice, lower equipment costs, and improved network performance. Radio Access Network vendors only offer proprietary equipment and network functions. This is the main reason organizations began developing open RAN standards to break out of that legacy. Proprietary products are typically more expensive than generic counterparts. Because there aren’t third-party RAN elements that can be integrated into a RAN vendor’s infrastructure, a network operator is stuck with one RAN vendor’s products. In an open interface, third-party products can communicate with the main RAN vendor’s infrastructure. Network operators can also opt for the less-expensive third- party product that operates on generic hardware. As network operators look to transition to a vRAN architecture for 5G, using open RAN interfaces can reduce the cost of deploying this new technology. When 5G technology advances and changes, network administrators working with open standard-based vRANs can easily send updates to the network infrastructure to accommodate the changes.