Deploying and operating Open RAN environments is far more complex than the vision suggests
Open RAN (Radio Access Network) has been heralded as a breakthrough for mobile operators, promising flexibility, innovation, and vendor diversity by disaggregating hardware and software into open, interoperable components. In theory, it’s a revolution. In practice, it’s a minefield.
The reality of deploying and operating Open RAN environments is far more complex than the vision suggests. Integrating equipment and software from multiple vendors across hybrid cloud architectures creates new operational, performance, and security challenges. Still, according to the 2025 Open Network Index, “Adoption of Open RAN grew by 30% between 2024 and 2025” and “multi-vendor Open RAN ambitions remain intact; 53% of operators plan to adopt it within two to three years.” As operators begin to consider deployments, they need to understand the difficulties and risks.
Complicated and risky
Global carriers are under pressure to reduce costs to consumers while maintaining perfect reliability in some of the complex networks on the planet. Open RAN offers flexibility and an opportunity to reduce costs, allowing operators to choose best-of-breed technology at a price point that works for them. It also introduces enormous network management and troubleshooting challenges. Instead of working with a single vendor and managing integrated components, there’s an entire vendor ecosystem to visualize, monitor and verify across continuously evolving operating environments. They move from “one throat to choke” to “who knows why this isn’t working?”
Change management in this environment also becomes fraught with risk. Carrier outages are becoming more common, with some analysts estimating 3 – 5 major outages per year. A significant example of a network outage occurred at Rogers Communications in Canada on July 8, 2022, when a failure lasting about 17 hours disrupted mobile and internet connectivity for more than 10 million customers and interrupted critical services in sectors such as banking and healthcare. The incident triggered intense public and regulatory scrutiny, underscoring the importance of reliable network infrastructure. Financial impacts were also substantial, with direct losses to Rogers estimated in the tens of millions of dollars and potential liability of up to C$4 billion if a proposed class action seeking compensation for affected customers were to succeed.
Like most industries today, telco operators are also troubled by skills and staffing shortages, and due to the operational realities of managing mutli-vendor, multi-cloud networks, IT teams now require deep cross-domain expertise just to maintain performance and reliability.
Visualizing and verifying the true state of the network
Network Operations, Security Operations and Cloud teams have traditionally used siloed tools to get visibility into what is happening across the network, but lacked a unified view of the entire hybrid multi-cloud environment. Many are turning to digital twin technology to provide a “single pane of glass” that can help them visualize, verify, and secure the true state of their networks across the entire Open RAN architecture.
A network digital twin is a live, always-accurate software replica of all connected devices and instances, configurations, and state across on-premises, hybrid and multicloud environments. It analyzes every possible path a packet can take and provides a consolidated and actionable always-current dataset of the entire Open RAN environment. This depth of visibility gives operations teams the insight needed to manage Open RAN’s complexities and also ensures that everyone is working from the same set of information. The digital twin serves as the authoritative baseline for a full audit of operating environments, enables pre-and post-change verification checks to ensure that connectivity, behavior, and performance remain as intended after any changes, and also enables repeatable, data-informed workflows for software patching and upgrades.
Keep SLAs high and subscribers satisfied
Digital twin technology allows operators to adopt new technologies like Open RAN with confidence while minimizing operational risk. Having a single source of truth for the network also allows them to focus on the core business while addressing other high-value issues like reducing mean time to resolution, inventory management, operational blind spots, tool overlap, and avoiding penalties. Network observability can provide the linchpin for maintaining a secure and resilient network infrastructure.
