Neil McRae, CTO at UK incumbent telco BT, has been fairly skeptical of the short term potential of Open RAN to meet mainstream 5G network requirements, and has been dismissive of the need for multivendor RANs (though he does want to see the choice of vendors expanded). However, he identifies certain scenarios in which he believes Open RAN has reasonably near term applications and could help to fill gaps in coverage and to support alternative deployment models. McRae recently spoke about the potential role of Open RAN, especially when managed by the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), to reach rural locations and urban ‘notspots’ such as tower blocks, and so help to bridge the digital divide. “We’re very much looking at…