As open source software moves into the mainstream of telco platforms (see separate item), so must white box, commoditized hardware, which drives the economics of software-defined networks (SDN). That white box approach will drive new suppliers of chips and boxes, as well as a rising interest in open source hardware, even for the base station. AT&T has been one of the biggest drivers of telco SDN and virtualization on the software side, and has shaken up some of its supply chain to support its massive Domain 2.0 project. However, for the physical networks, it has proved hard to reduce reliance on the traditional vendors, even if they have to fight to retain such dominant shares of AT&T’s deployments as in…