It has been a rocky ride for start-ups in private 5G, just as it has in Open RAN. Celona has emerged as one of the few to negotiate this unforgiving terrain successfully so far, through a combination of luck and judgment over timing, while forming constructive partnerships that complement its technology or expand its reach by geography and vertical sector. The company, headquartered in California, has just struck another such partnership with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE), which traces its heritage back to the French software company with roots in the original Bell Labs that was once part of AT&T (as its R&D arm), and which is now owned by Nokia. Through various corporate machinations, Bell Labs became Lucent, which then merged with…