Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) Solutions in North America

Nokia being one of the key players in the telecom and networking workspace, provides various products, solutions, and services with regards to SDN, NFV, and cloud solutions. With regards to C-RAN, Nokia provides Nokia AirScale Cloud RAN solutions.

Huawei being one of the important players in the C-RAN market also has a popular product in this particular market. Amongst its huge product portfolio, it provides the C-RAN WDM Bearer Solution, which comes under its fixed network section.

The company provides cloud-optimized network applications in which case the provided network is shared with cloud-optimized applications, along with an extremely high level of automation and resource arrangement, which are important capabilities for the deliverance of 5G service.

ZTE Corporation offers one of the best product lines in the telecommunication industry across various verticals, such as wireless networks, core networks, access and bearer networks, and services and terminals. ZTE endorses its new generation RAN solution, called ZTE Cloud RAN.

Mavenir provides flexible tools for RAN, which are developed with today's LTE and 5G network requirements in mind. The company realizes that there is a need for a flexible RAN, which has to be adaptable to the changing circumstances and responsive for the constantly evolving infrastructure requirements. Mavenir provides its C-RAN solution, called SmartC-RAN (SmartRRU and SmartC-BBU).

Samsung offers its product, Samsung C-RAN 2.0 to the C-RAN market. Samsung C-RAN 2.0 provides centralized Base Band Units (BBUs) from the RAN into either more than 1 centralized location, which eventually delivers substantial performance opportunities, along with scalability-driven cost benefits and improved site procurement.

Fujitsu provides a complete end-to-end solution for the C-RAN market space, which goes from point-to-point fronthaul network to a self-healing dissimilar path or ring architecture, which can be accomplished at ease, using the Fujitsu Smart CPRI Transport Solution. Fujitsu for the C-RAN market is called Fujitsu C-RAN Transport Solution.

NEC provides the NFV C-RAN product for catering to C-RAN requirements. NFV C-RAN is constructed upon understanding the significance of elasticity in C-RAN deployments. The company’s C-RAN solution is suitable for both small-scale carriers and large-scale carriers. Management and Network Orchestration (MANO) of this product simplifies and provides a hassle-free transition path toward the 5G area.

Altiostar provides an innovative architecture, which is a software-intensive virtualized RAN. The architecture provides better QoE, along with lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The company’s C-RAN solutions also provide carrier-grade NFV platform.

ASOCS provides NFV-compatible virtualized base stations and C-RAN solutions, eventually making the solutions more energy-efficient. It achieves this by taking all the layers and operations of the traditional base stations and changing them into computational software, which is virtualized on typical Commercial off-the-Shelf (COTS) platforms.

Intel has gained a substantial growth in the C-RAN market space, its acquisition of Altera in 2015. Altera designs and develops programmable chips (Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs)) for base stations and other infrastructure. It provides its C-RAN solutions under the Intel FPGA umbrella.

Cisco offers its product, Cisco Mobile Backhaul, which handles mobile backhauling issues. In order to meet the rising traffic demands, various solutions are required, such as reduced OPEX, enhanced time to revenue and average revenue per user, and transporting the huge surge in user bandwidth in an efficient and profitable manner.