Orange has changed its view on the virtualized RAN (vRAN) several times. Initially a great enthusiast, in recent years its senior executives have queried the near term business case and pushed back their timescales to deploy. However, a major test in Orange’s commercial LTE network in the city of Chelm, in Poland, signals that the French group does believe that vRAN will be an essential element of its 5G deployment when that starts around 2020. The French group has some of the longest-running vRAN tests and trials outside the technology’s birthplace in east Asia. However, the Polish activity is significant because it took place in a live network over a period of two months, and because Orange – which has…