Radio access network (RAN) deployments for 4G and earlier had relied on proprietary aggregated RF and Baseband equipment mainly from one dominant vendor and very few other vendors. Because of closed proprietary designs, it was very difficult to deploy multi-vendor RAN equipment due to interoperability challenges.

Service providers worldwide are driving adoption of an open RAN for 5G, and in some cases for 4G as well. The O-RAN Alliance has defined a RAN architecture with Open, virtualized, AI-enabled RAN architecture, that breaks down what was once a single-vendor, hardware-centric RAN into several sections.