Many Open RAN-supporting operators are concerned that, even if they break the lock-in of major base station vendors with open interfaces, there will be a new layer of lock-in at the chip level. In the macro network, Intel has achieved a significant headstart in virtualized and Open RAN trials and deployments because its FlexRAN reference platform had a near-monopoly of early efforts. It has added accelerators and new software to make its platform better suited to high performance vRAN elements such as distributed units that need to support Massive MIMO. But competitors such as Marvell and Qualcomm are pushing into the Open RAN macro network space, encouraged by operators – notably Vodafone, with its major O-RAN chipset initiatives – that…