Open RAN deployments remain constrained by performance shortfalls as operators approach a 2026 horizon that several carriers had marked for scaled rollouts, according to GSMA Intelligence.

The research arm of the mobile industry trade group published an assessment titled "Open RAN as 2026 looms: performance continues to hold it back," signaling that the architectural shift away from single-vendor radio access networks has not yet closed the gap with traditional kit on the metrics operators care about most.

What is holding Open RAN back?

The assessment keeps the spotlight on throughput, latency and interoperability — three areas where open interfaces have historically struggled to match the tuning that proprietary stacks achieve after years of vendor optimization. GSMA Intelligence's framing suggests these gaps remain material enough to slow the pace at which operators convert lab trials into commercial footprint.

Open RAN disaggregates the radio access network into standardized components, allowing operators to mix hardware and software from multiple suppliers. The model promises supply-chain resilience, cost competition and faster feature introduction. It also demands more integration effort, and the industry has been working through that learning curve since the first multi-vendor deployments went live in 2021 and 2022.

How serious is the performance concern?

The headline's wording — "continues to hold it back" — frames performance as a persistent rather than transient issue. That distinction matters for procurement teams weighing whether to commit to large-scale Open RAN buildouts within the next 18 months or wait for further maturation.

The 2026 reference point aligns with publicly stated ambitions from at least one major European operator that has tied multi-country Open RAN rollouts to that calendar year. Whether other carriers will hold or revise similar timelines is the open question GSMA Intelligence's report implicitly raises.

Where does this leave vendors?

Suppliers of disaggregated RAN software and merchant silicon have argued that integration maturity follows a curve familiar from earlier network transitions. The counter-argument, reflected in GSMA Intelligence's framing, is that operators evaluating Open RAN for high-traffic urban sites — rather than rural or supplementary capacity layers — continue to see performance deltas that complicate business cases.

The assessment lands at a moment when several tier-one operators are mid-decision on 2025-2027 radio access procurement. Performance data from field deployments, rather than laboratory benchmarks, is increasingly the deciding factor.

What changes before 2026?

Whether the performance picture shifts meaningfully between now and the end of 2026 depends on a small set of variables: the pace of integration work between major software stacks and merchant radio units, the maturity of the O-RAN ALLIANCE's test and certification regime, and the willingness of operators to publish comparative performance data from live sites. GSMA Intelligence's continued tracking of those variables will determine whether next year's assessment reads the same way.

For now, the message to carriers planning scaled Open RAN commitments is that the technology's commercial readiness, not its conceptual appeal, remains the binding constraint as the 2026 window approaches.