After months of speculation, Ericsson has joined the ORAN (Open RAN) Alliance, in what looks like a mighty departure from the norms on which the Swedish firm has built its whole business. Nokia and Samsung have embraced several of the initiatives seeking to create open frameworks for disaggregated, mix-and-match RANs, but Ericsson has remained aloof. It seems that, while Nokia and Ericsson would clearly rather remain in the cosy world where they could lock customers into proprietary, end-to-end networks, they feel the tide of open, interoperable, virtualized systems is too strong for them to resist. Nokia, whose thinking has been more software-centric than its rival’s for some years, perhaps found it easier to adapt itself to the new world, and…