Ban Chang in Thailand, a city lying between Bangkok and Pattaya, will be one of the first ‘smart cities’ to major on Open RAN 5G infrastructure for coordinated deployments between the public and private sectors. This has put the spotlight on the role of converged networks in metropolitan planning. The announcement came from US-based RAN and core software developer Mavenir, which is involved in the project alongside local 5G city technology specialist 5GCT, and Cisco, the latter providing switching hardware and application services. The decision to run Open RAN in millimeter wave spectrum and include Cisco as a partner rather than one of the big three RAN firms is a significant move for the country and for the profile of…