As centralized and virtualized RAN architectures move towards the mainstream of MNO planning, fronthaul issues will figure prominently at Mobile World Congress, creating new opportunities for dark fiber providers. Among ZTE’s pre-Barcelona announcements was a new OTN (optical transport network) product optimized for fronthaul, and reflecting how far ahead of the pack China is, when it comes to Cloud-RAN. The snappily named ZXMP M721 OD61 claims to address “the growing challenges and pain points that today’s mobile operators face with CPRI”. The offering can support 60G of bandwidth and claims to provide a highly efficient connection from the baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head to the CPRI interface that links them. It also supports multiple service access points, a…