These are early stages for the dream of an open RAN in which key elements from multiple vendors can be combined, swapped and reconfigured without sacrificing any performance or interoperability. A few large trials may be mainly meant as warning signals to existing vendors to take a more open, cost-effective approach, rather than a real effort to lower barriers to newer, smaller suppliers. The need to implement 5G quickly and robustly in some markets may drive some operators, albeit reluctantly, to stick with the certainty of an end-to-end solution from a well-established supplier with decades of R&D behind their offerings. But those objections were raised years ago in the data center, yet open source and virtualization took hold there and…