Open platforms are strategically hugely appealing to operators, promising to stimulate competition and innovation during the difficult migration to virtualized 5G RAN. However, their appeal quickly fades if they cannot be proven to deliver commercial performance that is as good as – or even better than – that of traditional integrated networks. Rakuten, as the driver-in-chief of the emerging Open RAN ecosystem, has a particularly heavy responsibility to provide a burden of proof. The first operator in the world with a macro-scale commercial Open RAN will be scrutinized – and criticized – beyond all reason by other operators, and by Open RAN critics, eager to understand how this emerging platform really will perform in the challenging applications of 5G. The…