Telecom Italia (TIM) was the last to sign up, of the five European operators that recently announced a memorandum of understanding to support Open RAN deployment and a local ecosystem. However, it has leapt ahead of its partners in that venture – Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone – in deploying Open RAN equipment in a live network in Europe. Most Open RAN roll-outs to date have been trials, or deployments in greenfield environments such as rural expansion. But TIM is implementing a system supplied by JMA Wireless and MTI in an existing live network in the city of Faenza, near Bologna in north-east Italy. That raises the question of how its new vendors will coexist with those already active…