The neutral host model and Open RAN have a natural synergy since both aim to reduce costs and accelerate innovation around 5G in dense urban environments and inside large public buildings. The neutral host concept itself has been a long time in gestation, although there have been a few notable deployments preceding 5G, for example in the City of London financial district in 2017. That was before Open RAN and in fact featured ubiquitous outdoor WiFi, pitched as an attraction for one of the world’s leading financial centers. It was advanced in concept for the time, also featuring a 4G small network as a precursor to 5G, all self-backhauled wirelessly by CCS Metnet from Cambridge Communication Systems, and available to…