Enrique Blanco, Telefónica’s CTO, was one of the eminent operator executives who warned, in 2017, that fast-tracking a non-standalone (NSA) variant of the 5G New Radio would deprive operators of many of the commercial benefits of 5G in the first few years, because most of those benefits require a 5G core. He remains impatient to move towards the full 5G architecture, even though his employer has not yet switched on commercial 5G networks even with NSA. But he is determined to deploy a multivendor 5G core, even though that will add to the already daunting complexities of the migration. At the 5G Core Summit in Madrid this week, he said it would be “easier and cheaper” to work with just…