Qualcomm has begun sampling its promised 5G RAN products, in what could be a significant boost to the scale of the Open RAN industry from mid-2023, when brownfield operators are expected to start deploying the technology in earnest, if mainly in small cell or rural environments rather than urban macrocells. The products – the X100 5G RAN Accelerator Card and QRU100 5G RAN Platform – were first announced two years ago. They see Qualcomm returning to the macro network infrastructure market for the first time since 1999, when it sold its infra-side assets to Ericsson to concentrate on devices. It has a small cell system-on-chip family, FSM, but it has been clear that its roadmap for 5G RAN extends to…