The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) is having an increasingly heavy influence on the evolution of open cellular networks. It provides the pragmatic face of an open movement, especially on the RAN side, that can often seem over-simplistic and sometimes politicized in its goals. While bodies such as the O-RAN Alliance and Open Networking Foundation work on specs; operators run trials and pressurize incumbent vendors; and governments seek to influence the 5G supply chain, TIP is mainly concerned with making deployments more practical. It focuses on operator requirements, on design and roll-out blueprints, and on filling gaps in the platform where others have not devoted resources. However, TIP does have something of a split personality. Founded in early 2016 by Facebook,…