Buried in the USA’s giant $280bn CHIPS and Science Act (see Key Issues) is provision for $1.5bn of funding for US companies that are developing Open RAN technology. The sum of $1.5bn is clearly a drop in the ocean in relation to US policy makers’ objective. They foresee Open RAN as a means to encourage diversity in the 5G networks supply chain, and therefore opportunities for challenger vendors to break into the closed world of Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei. This would not only make it easier and more cost-effective for operators to replace Chinese equipment, since they would have a wider choice of hardware and software at different price points, but could enable the USA to build a RAN industry…