The new network architecture will be more significant than the 5G radio itself in transforming the economics of the mobile operator, in terms of cost efficiency and of support for a wide range of new revenue streams. Only with a virtualized platform will MNOs secure the new cost base and flexibility they need; and 5G’s most important contribution may be to make it more achievable to support a fully virtualized RAN, and to use that as a platform for end-to-end, multivendor, multi-operator network slicing. The most prominent announcement was of yet another AT&T-inspired open industry initiative, ORAN (see separate item), which brings together the US telco’s XRAN effort with the Cloud-RAN Alliance for a concerted attempt to bring white box…