When broad-based engineering group Altran acquired Aricent in 2017, it pushed into the mobile market, with a particular focus on small cells. In the past week, it has announced a range of partnerships with vendors to create 5G solutions, and its string of news highlights how the supply chain for many elements of the disaggregated 5G RAN – including small cells and fronthaul connections – will be very different from the world of 4G. As the large end-to-end vendors shift their emphasis towards software, orchestration and integration, many virtualized and physical components of the network will be provided by a wider variety of smaller companies, which will rely heavily on reference designs and engineering blueprints to reduce their cost and…