While there are many discussions about virtualized, disaggregated RAN – often in the context of Open RAN initiatives – for most operators this remains a next-generation option. Indeed, many are only just deploying the less disruptive Centralized RAN (C-RAN) at scale. C-RAN involves a shared baseband processing platform that can support a number of cell sites, potentially a very large number. The key difference from vRAN is that the baseband does not need to be virtualized, and so operators can achieve some of the upsides of resource pooling without the daunting migration to cloud-based architectures, at least until these platforms become more mature and de-risked. The bigger the number of sites supported, the greater the benefits of scalability and resource…