Ericsson has generally been painted as being stubbornly hostile to Open RAN, protecting its network lock-ins even as Nokia and Samsung, in a bid to steal some of its market, have pinned their colors to the O-RAN mast. In fact, the Swedish vendor’s approach has been more nuanced than this. For instance, it is active on several O-RAN working groups, and has now introduced its first product for an Open RAN environment, the Intelligent Automation Platform. This is a Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) system for Open RAN networks and contains a non-real time RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC). The non-real time RIC has been Ericsson’s key focus of active interest in the O-RAN Alliance and could enable it to take a strategic role…