One of the biggest questions surrounding Open RAN is who will do the integration of the many moving parts, if an operator goes for a true multivendor approach? Some operators, particularly smaller ones, are placing their hopes on initiatives such as Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP – see separate item) to provide a large measure of pre-integration, a step on the way to a plug-and-play network. However, that remains a distant dream for macro networks that will be charged with shouldering the considerable traffic and reliability burdens of 5G use cases. In this case, systems integration (SI) is likely to be a large part of the effort of deploying an Open RAN – a Rethink study found that on average, operators…