Virtualized RAN: 4G/5G strategies, opportunities, and pitfalls

The transition to 5G is a transition to containers and cloud-native network applications, in particular vRAN, according to a Heavy Reading survey. This transition brings with it several enabling technologies, such as network slicing and edge computing, that in turn set the stage for the dominant 5G use cases: Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC), and Massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC). To support these technologies and use cases, the 5G network transformation increasingly assumes a virtualized RAN – one that is container-based and cloud-native.