Multi-vendor O-RAN integration: CU/DU/RU from different vendors

The Promise and Complexity of Multi-Vendor RAN

O-RAN disaggregation enables operators to select best-of-breed components — a CU-CP from one vendor for superior mobility management, a CU-UP from another for efficient user plane processing, a DU optimized for massive MIMO from a third, and an O-RU from a fourth specializing in cost-effective radio hardware. This mix-and-match approach breaks the single-vendor lock-in of traditional RAN but introduces integration complexity across F1, E1, and open fronthaul interfaces. Each interface must interoperate at the protocol level, with matching ASN.1 encoding, timer values, procedure semantics, and…