From rApp Portability to Agentic RAN: Building Open Network Automation

For over a decade, the industry has debated how to make Open RAN not just interoperable but genuinely intelligent, with rApps that can be built once and deployed across any operator’s network. In a conversation on The Signal Boost, Telecom Infra Project’s (TIP), Vishal Mathur sat down with Abdel Bagegni, Head of OpenRAN Technology at TIP, and Michael Behan, Solutions Architect at Zinkworks, to unpack how vendor-agnostic SMO/RIC frameworks and AI-driven automation are turning rApp portability from a standards goal into commercial reality, highlighted by Zinkworks’ partnership with Vodafone on a GenAI platform cutting RAN application development time by up to 70%.

Highlights

• Vodafone’s Rapid RIC platform, built with Zinkworks, uses GenAI to simplify rApp development, with Vodafone expecting a 60-70% cut in development and launch times, enabling engineers to ship new features in weeks instead of months.
• Zinkworks supports the full rApp lifecycle, building, training, validating, deploying, and governing intelligent RAN applications so operators can move from SON-based automation to a scalable, SMO-agnostic rApp ecosystem.
• TIP is driving vendor-agnostic SMO/RIC frameworks and commercially relevant rApp use cases, including energy saving and anomaly detection, laying the groundwork for agentic AI in telecom networks and future 6G-ready automation.