The newly agreed open fronthaul specification for Open RAN appears to resolve concerns over performance of massive MIMO (mMIMO) – at the expense of restricting diversity of supply. That was, after all, the major motivator for Open RAN in the first place, although in practice, the field was always going to consolidate down to a handful of key vendors, although hopefully not quite as constricted as the traditional RAN supply chain has become. It is certainly true also that concerns over performance of mMIMO under Open RAN had effectively prevented operators deploying it in dense urban environments. This follows the mounting consensus that mMIMO is absolutely critical for the success of 5G NR in those urban settings, by enabling higher…