Sometimes, memorandums of understanding between multiple large companies are followed by years of silence as the parties struggle to coordinate any concrete deliverables. Not so with the MoU announced on January 20 by Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone, joined a couple of weeks later by Telecom Italia (TIM). Less than four months later, the five partners have already issued their first joint paper, which outlines their key technical requirements for Open RAN, and sets an ambitious target of commercial readiness by 2022. This sets out their demands on any vendor that wishes to be part of the European operators’ supply chains, and it provides far more detail than previous statements, or the Open RAN RFIs issued by Vodafone and Telefónica…