Vodafone believes that, when the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) is mature, there will be an applications marketplace comparable to the Google or Apple app stores, in which operators and enterprises can download xApps and rApps for network management and control. However, the RIC is not currently mature enough for commercial deployment, according to Vodafone’s senior Open RAN manager Lucia De Miguel Albertos. Talking to TelecomTV’s Open RAN Summit last week, Albertos said the “democratization” of the RIC via marketplace platforms would be an important element of the hoped-for impact of Open RAN on network economics and supply chains. In traditional mobile networks, she said in the talk: “Radio resource management is dominated by a few players with proprietary…