Bharti Airtel has been a major public supporter of Open RAN, though it recently said that the technology would not be ready for large 5G sites for some years. However, in trials, it has reported speeds of over 1Gbps, using test spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band. Airtel worked with Mavenir vRAN software on the trial, which ran between Chandigarh and Mohali. The operator’s CTO, Randeep Sekhon, commented: “This is a major milestone for the Open RAN ecosystem in India, and yet another validation of the growing readiness of 5G networks based on open architecture.” Airtel was the first operator in India to deploy an open vRAN solution, based on O-RAN Alliance specs, commercially. Its rival, Reliance Jio,…