Perhaps new lockdowns and impending recession cast a shadow over optimism in every quarter at the start of 2021, but the discussions about open RAN certainly came with a hefty dose of weary scepticism compared to the enthusiasms of 2020. Would O-RAN be yet another example of a vision of resetting the rules in the wireless industry, that crashed on the rocks of entrenched interests and the practical challenges of deploying large-scale wireless networks? There are plenty of past examples after all. To name just a few, we can remember the push for patent pools to standardize royalty payments in 4G handsets; the open equipment ecosystem that was supposed to accompany WiMAX; even the open source base station (which was…