The term C-RAN is being used almost as broadly as 5G, and several operators already claim to have ‘centralized RANs’ or ‘virtualized RANs’. Now SK Telecom of Korea, one of the companies which has been boasting about C-RAN for a couple of years, is claiming the world’s first true Cloud-RAN, and says it is ushering in the era of “All-IT”, to take the “All-IP” network towards 5G. As in 5G, there is a hefty dose of semantics as operators look to outdo one another, but SK is also moving the terms of the C-RAN debate forward. There have been several major trials and even deployments of virtualized base stations, enabling a cluster of cell sites to be managed by a…