O-RAN Alliance Summit 2026: Operators drive Open RAN adoption at scale
O-RAN ALLIANCE Summit - on demand replay
At the O-RAN Alliance Summit 2026 during MWC, industry leaders discussed the evolution of Open RAN from concept to large-scale deployment. Deutsche Telekom’s Thomas Lips, chair of the O-RAN Alliance board, outlined progress, including 147 new specifications and partnerships with regional standards bodies, such as ETSI and ATIS. The summit featured operators including Rakuten Mobile, which has deployed 350,000 cells across a multi-vendor ecosystem and achieved EBITDA profitability within five years. Panel discussions covered operator success stories, with emphasis on moving from traditional integration challenges to productivity-focused implementations. The alliance is also beginning 6G work items in collaboration with the 3GPP, positioning Open RAN principles for next-generation networks.
Featuring:
- Ari Kynäslahti, SVP and Mobile Networks CTO, Nokia Mobile Infrastructure
- Changsoon Choi, VP, NW Intelligence and Innovation, Deutsche Telekom
- Femi Adeyemi, VP and Head of Strategic Product Management, 1Finity
- Gabriel Brown, Senior Principal Analyst, Mobile Networks, Omdia (moderator x3)
- Gabriel Foglander, Head of Strategic RAN Leadership, Ericsson
- Henrik Jansson, VP and Head of North America Business Development, Networks Business, Samsung Networks
- Kanika Atri, Senior Director, Telecoms, NVIDIA
- Lorenzo Casaccia, VP & Head of Technology Standards, Qualcomm Technologies
- Lucia de Miguel, Senior Open RAN Manager, Vodafone
- Rob Soni, VP RAN Technology, AT&T (appears in two sessions)
- Ruth Brown, Principal Analyst, Mobile Networks, Omdia (moderator)
- Sadayuki Abeta, Chief Open RAN Strategist, NTT DOCOMO, and CTO, OREX SAI
- Sudhakar Pandey, Head of RAN, Rakuten Mobile
- Thomas Lips, Chair of the Board of O-RAN ALLIANCE and SVP RAN Disaggregation & Enablement, Deutsche Telekom (appears in two sessions)
- Warren Bayek, Vice President, Intelligent Edge, Wind River
- Yigal Elbaz, SVP, Network CTO, AT&T
First broadcast live: 2 March 2026
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