While Nokia and Samsung have leapt to embrace open RAN architectures, and specifically the O-RAN Alliance, Ericsson has remained largely aloof. It has joined the Alliance but, unlike its two rivals, not announced compliant products, and has tended to adopt a wait-and-see approach in public comments. If Nokia and Samsung hope to use their market weight to hijack control of O-RAN’s direction and dominate the first wave of commercial sales, Ericsson seems just to be hoping O-RAN, with its implicit threat to the traditional mobile network business model, will go away. Its latest attempt to undermine confidence in the emerging platform is focused on the controversial topic of security. Supporters of open, and even open source, platforms argue that these…