Special Report: Open platforms in 5G We have commented before on how far the move towards open platforms within mobile networks will also introduce open source models to the previously closed world of cellular infrastructure. To some extent, this debate is skewed by the market focus on the open RAN – understandable, given that the RAN is by far the largest element of mobile expenditure, but not always representative of developments in other areas of investment. So far, open source models have made limited impact on the RAN. The O-RAN Alliance does have an open source strand, called O-RAN Software Community, which has some projects that are additional to the main program (including work on Split 6, which has…