Their RIC Was Making Decisions on 2-Second-Old Data
Open RAN promises intelligent network optimization. But when your telemetry takes 2.3 seconds to reach the RIC, you're optimizing based on what the network looked like 2.3 seconds ago. In mobile, that's ancient history.
Evidence boundaryHistorical case-specific report. Figures describe the deployment documented at the time and are not current universal product guarantees.
Client
European Telecom Operator
Industry
Use Case
O-RAN Telemetry Processing & Network Optimization
Products
Expanso, OpenShift SNO, Red Hat Stack
Timeline
12 sites pilot, full rollout in 14 weeks
ROI
47% reduction in observability platform costs
/ Challenge
The Challenge
The network ops team had a dashboard problem. Their O-RAN deployment was generating 2.1GB of telemetry per cell site per hour. Multiply that by 3,847 sites and you're looking at 8TB/hour hitting your observability platform. Splunk was happy to invoice them accordingly.
3,847 cell sites generating 2.1GB/hour each - 8TB/hour total
Near-RT RIC latency was 2.3 seconds - too slow for real optimization
Splunk ingestion costs were $847K/month and climbing
Backhaul links saturated during peak hours
Red Hat mandate: everything runs on OpenShift or it doesn't run
Four different RAN vendors, four different telemetry formats
/ Solution
The Solution
We put Expanso on OpenShift SNO at each cell site. Raw telemetry stays local. The site computes aggregates, detects anomalies, and transforms everything to OTLP before sending. Splunk gets 450MB/hour instead of 2.1GB. The RIC gets what it needs in 89ms instead of 2.3 seconds.
Local Aggregation
Each site rolls up 15-second metrics into 5-minute summaries. Anomaly detection runs locally - Splunk only sees events that need attention. Raw data stays on-site for 72 hours if you need it.
OpenShift SNO Native
Runs as a standard OpenShift workload on their existing SNO deployments. Same GitOps pipeline, same monitoring, same security policies. IT didn't have to learn anything new.
Multi-Vendor OTLP
Samsung, Nokia, Ericsson, Mavenir - each has their own telemetry format. Expanso translates everything to OTLP at the edge. Central systems see one consistent format.
/ Results
The Results
The RIC finally works like it's supposed to. Network optimization decisions happen on 89ms-old data instead of 2.3 seconds. The Splunk bill dropped 47% - not because they're logging less, but because they stopped sending noise.
78%
Telemetry Reduction
89ms
RIC Latency
47%
Cost Reduction
14 weeks
Full Rollout
Telemetry volume dropped from 2.1GB to 450MB per site per hour
RIC optimization latency improved from 2.3 seconds to 89 milliseconds
Splunk monthly cost reduced from $847K to $449K
Backhaul utilization dropped 31% - more headroom for customer traffic
Single OTLP format across all four RAN vendors
12-site pilot validated in 3 weeks, remaining 3,835 sites in 11 weeks
Same OpenShift GitOps workflow they already had
/ Explore Related Solutions
/ What's next
Drowning in telemetry?
If your observability bill keeps climbing and your RIC decisions are based on stale data, we should talk. We've done this at scale across multiple RAN vendors.
/ Typical engagement
30 days
Free assessment
90 days
Optional pilot
Measured
Baseline vs. after
