Almost four years after emerging from stealth mode, Cisco-backed Cloud-RAN start-up Altiostar has announced general availability of its Virtualized RAN offering for LTE. Commercial availability comes a year after the platform was launched, boasting Ethernet fronthaul to lower the cost and complexity of deploying this architecture. Like other vRAN designs, Altiostar offers stripped-down cell site equipment, while running most of the network functions in software on off-the-shelf server or router hardware. It offers macrocell and microcell eNodeBs; intelligent RRHs; and virtualized baseband units (vBBUs) which run as virtual network functions on off-the-shelf hardware and a Linux/OpenStack software platform. Clusters of RRHs are connected to the vBBU on standard Ethernet over any medium including line of sight and NLOS microwave, millimeter…