With India’s long-awaited and much-anticipated 5G auction underway, speculation has been mounting over which infrastructure and technology firms will benefit most from subsequent deployments, with the spotlight falling on Open RAN. This reflects the country’s promotion of Open RAN for diversifying its supply chain and encouraging local firms in the spirit of Make in India, an initiative launched in September 2014 to stimulate local hi-tech manufacturing. The focus on Open RAN has intensified as a result of the US actions against Chinese technology companies, particularly Huawei and to a lesser extent ZTE, which has led to India effectively barring them from participation in its 5G roll-out. While India did not explicitly ban the Chinese vendors, the country omitted them…