However open networks may be, one aspect tends to remain a closely guarded secret -the price. The complexity and customization of RANs, in particular, has made it hard to achieve any meaningful ‘rate card’ pricing, which has made it challenging for smaller operators, especially, to understand what they should be paying. For large operators, by contrast, there have been some benefits to the time-honored system of secretive bilateral price negotiations with vendors, since they can leverage their scale and influence to get a good deal. But with a diminishing number of macro network vendors, it has become harder to play one supplier off against another for a more attractive price. Rakuten Mobile, so often the operator that sounds the starting…