It is unlikely that anyone in the early 2000's envisioned that the concepts used to create cloud-based enterprise applications would find their way into commercial wireless networks. Today's network operators are using networking technologies such as SDN and NFV to virtualize their Radio Access Networks (RAN) to meet the growing demands that require dynamic scalability, increased management efficiencies, and cost-effective operations.
Virtual RAN - or vRAN - can improve network performance, reduce costs, and simplify infrastructure expansion for network service providers, all while providing the necessary resources that maintain good customer experiences. The new virtualized architecture deconstructs parts of the RAN, which enables operators to gain economies of scale through software-defined functions as well as improve processing efficiency required by latency-sensitive applications.