Although, 5G is in a position to fully utilize virtualized RAN, it is not necessary that every network operator will go with virtualized RAN. There are certain use cases where traditional RAN can work fine enough if not better. For example, if you just had to provide bearable coverage in this particular area as an example, an operator could just buy a traditional RAN base station that would have both the baseband unit as well as the radio unit in an instant. You would have a sufficient wireless coverage in this area, thanks to this new cell. But there are certain use cases where traditional RAN ends up being an overkill. For example, as we know, RAN has two components; baseband unit and radio unit. It is possible for some use cases that you will only need coverage-related capabilities of radio unit, but not processing capabilities that come with baseband unit. Whereas, if you buy the entire box, then you have essentially spent your money on buying a BBU that wasn't exactly beneficial to you. This is one scenario, along with many others, wherein traditional RAN could end up being an overkill for your system. Although, such a deployment might sound simpler. One of the foremost drawbacks of traditional RAN, as you may have guessed already, is higher capital and operational expenditure. How would a virtualized deployment look like on the other hand? Well, the individual base stations would mostly just be the radio units antenna, and the associated remote radio heads or RF processing units, and all those radio units would ultimately connect to a BBU. The point here is that, the virtualized deployment is more flexible as compared to traditional deployment because all you need is a radio unit, which is going to be substantially cheaper than deploying an entire base station. For example, on this radio unit, you need higher computational power, you can scale your Cloud resources here accordingly, and dedicate that capacity to this particular radio unit so that, that particular 5G cell now is in a position to give higher throughput and higher capacity exactly as your design warranted. Virtualized RAN can essentially achieve the same or even better results, but at lower cost, thereby, requiring operators to have lower startup investments. But not only that, because of the overall Cloud-friendly nature of virtualized RAN, these deployments are more scalable and flexible than what a traditional RAN would entail. The prime benefit of virtualized RAN is that, it is a surgical solution, it solves only those problems that are currently critical, and by avoiding wastage of capital on problems that aren't really problems, by taking the surgical approach, virtualized RAN utilizes operator capital more efficiently, thereby, still giving the improved performance in terms of latency and throughput that the RAN is required to offer.