The past few years, AT&T has spearheaded many open source initiatives related to key enablers of next generation networks and services. These include Open Network Automation Protocol (ONAP – see below), Acumos for AI, Akraino for edge computing and others. One that looks set to be very influential in the emerging, and challenging, area of disaggregated virtualized RANs is Open RAN (ORAN), which has attracted support from a wide range of operators, including AT&T’s arch-rival Verizon. The ORAN Alliance is looking to specify open interfaces between the elements of a disaggregated RAN – the central unit (CU), distributed unit (DU) and remote radio unit (RRU). These are designed to avoid these key interfaces being defined by individual vendors in proprietary…