Three has started a small cell Open RAN rollout in central Glasgow, Scotland, the first Open RAN deployment for dense inner-city demands, claims the operator. But to look closer, this is another example of single-vendor Open RAN (see Ericsson-AT&T article) and also a touch of virtue signaling, to win the approval of UK regulators for Three’s intended merger with Vodafone. US vendor and Open RAN specialist Mavenir is the only vendor for the radios and baseband software, making this Open RAN compliant but still a single vendor operation. The radio unit (RU) is installed on the small cell and the central and distributed units are in Three’s local exchanges and data facilities. Small cell specialist and neutral host provider Boldyn…