Arguably the biggest challenge in opening up the RAN will be in the semiconductor layer. Traditional RANs run on baseband processors designed by the proprietary equipment vendors specifically to perform RAN tasks. Ericsson sees the performance of these special-purpose chips as fundamental to its networks’ performance. Far from being ashamed of not adopting open processors, it has even adopted an ‘Ericsson Silicon’ brand, reminiscent of ‘Intel Inside’, to emphasize the differentiation. But the Open RAN vision is that every layer of the network, from chips to management and applications, should be based on common platforms and potentially multivendor. This has prompted a race by the merchant chip firms to develop baseband processors that can compete in performance with the Ericsson…