Poor Juniper has so often been a wallflower in the telecoms industry, despite some strong technology assets. In recent years, it has been linked to acquisition talks with both Ericsson and Nokia, but in both cases was passed over for larger partnerships (Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent respectively). Those deals reduced the value of its existing alliances with the big RAN vendors, particularly its ability to strengthen their end-to-end offerings with its traditional and SDN-driven transport offerings. Now Juniper is back in the limelight, forging a new 5G-oriented deal with Ericsson which could, some speculate, be the prelude to a merger. Ericsson’s ambitious partnership with Cisco seems to be virtually dormant, and is rarely mentioned by executives any more, even though it…