Vodafone is one of the most active and impactful operators in driving Open RAN forward. But it is unusual because it is not a greenfield like Rakuten or Dish, and because it largely sticks to vanilla Open RAN specifications – unlike the US incumbents with their customized approaches to multivendor, cloud-based 5G. Vodafone is increasingly looking beyond its own deployment plans and aiming to use its experience and ecosystem to help accelerate uptake elsewhere, while spearheading progress in key areas such as semiconductors. At an event last week, it offered more vision and detail around its plans for a global role, leading to speculation that, like NTT Docomo, Rakuten and Reliance Jio, it may take the logical next step and…