Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom had been driving Open RAN harder than most brownfield telcos, and been indirectly awarded for its commitment with a grant of almost $35 million from the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO2) program. It was strictly Taiwan’s maker of RF modules and terminals Microelectronics Technology (MTI) that won the award, from this program set up to advance global adoption of O-RAN technology. However, it was Chunghwa Telecom’s involvement as partner that attracted the NTIA in the first place, with its commitment as a telco to deploy O-RAN with multiple vendors as quickly as possible. Given that NOFO2’s direct mission is to support top-tier vendors in the O-RAN field through financial assistance…