Open RAN Landscape in Brazil: Ecosystem, Research Advancements, and Technical Gaps

Brazil faces connectivity gaps in remote regions, worsened by the high costs of proprietary 5G vendor lock-in. Open Radio Access Networks (Open RAN) offer a disruptive, cost-effective solution through network disaggregation, making it a research frontier. To understand this transition, this paper creates a thematic mapping of recent Brazilian research in the Open RAN ecosystem, highlighting national advancements in orchestration, network slicing, cybersecurity, and energy efficiency. We also map open technical challenges, from zero-touch automation and satellite integration to local hardware manufacturing and Edge-to-Cloud datacenter opportunities, providing a vision for the future of national telecommunications research.