Open RAN in 2024: why deployments are lagging behind expectations

This latest edition of the GSMA Open Gateway research series provides an update on the state of the market, recent developments and examples of Open Gateway in action. The market is increasingly moving away from operator-specific API exposure and towards platform-mediated distribution, where developers prefer a single integration point with global reach. This changes the commercial dynamic for the ecosystem.

European mobile markets are undergoing a structural shift: rising data usage, declining revenue per user, saturating subscriber penetration and sustained investment requirements have made operator scale increasingly important. Europe remains the least concentrated major mobile region in the world, with operators being structurally subscale compared to global peers. This gap has widened during precisely the period when scale matters most.

To aid operators that are evaluating middle-mile transport solutions, GSMA Intelligence has developed the TCO Calculator, based on research and analysis of existing and emerging middle-mile transport solutions across a number of deployment scenarios around the world. The rapid expansion of 5G networks is driving an unprecedented surge in mobile data consumption, which is placing immense pressure on the middle mile. As a result, operators must diversify their product/solution mix for middle-mile transport.