TECHNOLOGY

AT & T’ s five-year collaboration with Ericsson has a potential value of approximately US $ 14 billion. The massive investment legitimises Open RAN for large-scale deployments and signals a major strategic shift

The disaggregated future: The Open RAN paradigm Open RAN represents a radical departure, replacing the monolithic structure with a modular, softwarecentric and multi-vendor ecosystem built on three core principles: disaggregation, virtualisation and openness.

The most fundamental change is the disaggregation of the BBU into two distinct logical components: the Centralised Unit( CU) and the Distributed Unit( DU). The functional split allows for greater deployment flexibility. Crucially, Open RAN leverages virtualisation, enabling

Johan Hultell, Head of Product Line Cloud & Purpose-built 5G RAN, Ericsson

The transition to Open RAN presents a significant operational challenge for our customers: the full system integration and lifecycle management of a disaggregated solution. This is precisely where our focus lies. We see our work with AT & T as the true exemplification of an ecosystem approach, where multiple vendors collaborate to meet complex network requirements, with Ericsson as a key contributor.

Our longstanding partnership has built the trust necessary for such a transformative project. We believe the path to a successful, large-scale Open RAN deployment, especially in a complex‘ brownfield’ network, is through industrialisation. We are committed to this by working with our industry partners to create pre-verified and pre-integrated solutions. The strategy is designed to de-risk the deployment and make the operation of open networks less time-consuming and less costly. Ultimately, our goal is to provide a stable, high-performance foundation that allows our customers to confidently embrace the innovation and flexibility of a multi-vendor future, without compromising on the carrier-grade reliability that networks demand.

84 November 2025