The two main organizations working on open RAN specifications, Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and the O-RAN Alliance, have addressed a major perceived barrier to a common RAN platform by announcing a liaison agreement to ensure their efforts are aligned. Although the two groups have very different starting points, and their work is largely complementary, there has been a widespread perception that they were in competition to provide specs for some key elements of an open network, such as a common fronthaul interface or a distributed cell site gateway (DCSG). The fact they each had different initiatives for such elements, and different operators appeared to be the main drivers (AT&T in O-RAN, for example, and Vodafone or Telefónica in TIP), fuelled…