What is vRAN?

Virtualized RAN, or vRAN, is a highly complex topic, and there are a lot of new questions about what it means in the context of 5G. On this episode of Recalibrate, Samsung Networks’ Marketing Director Derek Johnston helps to demystify the benefits for implementing vRAN network solutions, use cases for the technology, and the role it will play in our collective 5G future.

vRAN is a virtualized radio access network and is seen as the next step in the evolution of cellular networks, particularly in advancing 5G, helping to evolve previously hardware-driven functions by making them virtualized or software-based. Similar to the transition that took place in IT networks, many operators are looking to move towards a software-based network to become more flexible in providing new services and feature enhancements as well as overall network management. vRAN moves the controller functions of today’s hardware base stations to centralized servers, bringing them closer to the edge of a network to allow Mobile Network Operators, or MNOs, to pool and adjust radio resources to better accommodate for user traffic. Today’s future-proof 4G vRAN solutions are ready to deliver in the 5G world to provide the connectivity and performance users will come to expect from next-generation networks.