Some of the doubts about Open RAN as a technology that will be deployable in the short term for large-scale networks relate to advanced use cases. Brian Daly, head of core network and regulatory standards at AT&T, told the recent Big 5G Event that Open RAN would be introduced only gradually because “more work needs to be done to ensure O-RAN can meet our complex feature set”. “You don’t just go ‘full open’,” he said, though AT&T intends to introduce the technology in some rural roll-outs later this year or in early 2022. However, even in those relatively undemanding rural networks, operators meet a different challenge with Open RAN – not its support for very advanced implementations, but for legacy…