Special Report: Open RAN latest Direct intervention by politicians in matters of technology rarely ends well. Of course, government funding to help develop technology and support new vendors can be very valuable, but it needs to be channelled through funding bodies that have a deep understanding of what is required. Politicians making broad statements about complex platforms like virtualized RAN is at best irrelevant, and at worst, can set false expectations and the inevitable backlash. Open RAN is suffering from this somewhat. Having been many government’s favorite silver bullet to fire at the twin issues of squeezing Huawei out of 5G networks, while also building up local 5G industries, there is now open disappointment that the technology will not be…