LightTrends Newsletter

LightCounting releases its Disaggregated Open Routers Report

March 31, 2022 – LightCounting’s second annual report provides an update on the emergence of the Disaggregated Open Routers (DOR) market in wireless infrastructure. DOR are white-box cell site, aggregation and core routers based on an open and disaggregated architecture for existing 2G/3G/4G and future 5G network architectures. Our research indicates that the overall DOR market remains incipient and unless proof of concept (PoC), testing and validation accelerate, volumes will take some time to materialize.

“Despite TIP’s relentless efforts to push network disaggregation to all network elements and domains, and a flurry of communication service providers (CSPs) taking the lead with commercial DOR deployments like AT&T with DriveNets (NOS), UfiSpace (hardware) and Broadcom (networking silicon), a large majority of CSPs remain skeptical about the potential opex reduction, the maturity of transport disaggregation, and the impact on operations, administration, maintenance, procurement and support.” said Stéphane Téral, Chief Analyst at LightCounting Market Research.

Our major findings in the report are:

• The open RAN ascension brought router disaggregation to the spotlight and paved the way to 4 fundamental routes. This phenomenon would have never happened without TIP’s initiative.
• Although NOS software vendors are mushrooming and by far outnumbering the white box hardware suppliers dominated by UfiSpace, there has been some casualties down the DOR road. In the networking silicon domain, Broadcom remains predominant.
• CSPs remain cautiously optimistic about router disaggregation but have yet to see more maturity and the full benefits. As AT&T is showing the DOR way, KDDI and LG U+ could be DriveNets’ next major customers.
• With all inputs from all vendors and CSPs with DOR rollout plans taken into consideration, our cell site-based model produced a forecast showing a slow start that reflects the early stage of this market and an uptick at the end of the 2021-2026 forecast period marked by a double digit CAGR.

This report explores the emergence of the Disaggregated Open Routers (DOR) market. Disaggregated open routers are white-box routers based on separated white box hardware and software with cloud enabled software functions for existing 2G/3G/4G and future 5G network architectures. The report analyzes the disaggregated open routers’ (aggregation and core) architectures and implementations in wireless infrastructure, including the emerging vendor ecosystem, and tracks white box hardware units and sales, and software sales, all broken down by region including North America, Europe Middle East Africa, Asia Pacific, and Caribbean Latin America. It includes the total number of cell sites worldwide and a 5-year market forecast. As this market is just emerging, it is too early to publish vendor market shares.