A few weeks ago, we pointed out that Vodafone UK, while being a major champion of Open RAN, was staying conservative in the core, selecting Ericsson as its 5G core network supplier. Now its UK rival, Virgin Media O2, also an Open RAN triallist, has also announced that its 5G core will be supplied by Ericsson. This highlights how, for all the UK government’s efforts to drive 5G supply chain diversification in the wake of the ban on Huawei, the ability to achieve this in the next wave of 5G roll-outs and upgrades will be limited. The point was further reinforced when Telefónica Spain announced that the radio equipment for its forthcoming 5G Standalone network would be supplied by Ericsson…