Vodafone is pushing to lead the Open RAN systems integration movement and liberate associated cost savings as well as service opportunities in a white paper just published. The subtext is that Vodafone is impatient for faster progress and concerned that despite various piecemeal efforts involving equipment vendors, operators and systems integrators themselves, there is a lack of coordination, combined with fragmentation and duplication of effort. The paper seeks to put operators in charge of Open RAN integration and promote Vodafone’s own model for how it should be coordinated with vendors. The operator is clearly aiming to become the lead evangelist for Open RAN, after in January 2022 claiming pole position in its domestic UK market by switching on its…