Telefónica will deploy open RAN base stations next year and intends to transition at least 50% of its markets to open RAN by 2025, according to CTO Enrique Blanco.

Dimitris Mavrakis, senior research director at ABI Research, called the product a “major breakthrough and significant milestone in the evolution of open RAN.”

“I think you have to kind of plan for a little bit of downside,” AT&T CEO John Stankey said. "The last six months, my life has been expect the

“We build 5G right. We want it to be transformative. We don’t want it to be inferior to a 4G network," Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said.

Overcoming myriad competing interests to achieve even some open RAN goals is an ongoing challenge with no apparent resolution in sight.

The contract marks the sixth vendor selection to date for Dish following previous deals with Altiostar, Fujitsu, Mavenir, VMware, and Matrixx.

“The opportunities for us to partner and build an ecosystem with the hyperscale cloud providers is our future to be really honest," Vodafone UK CTO Scott Petty said.

“Security really is something that needs to be built in and not bolted on,” Ericsson's Paul Challoner said.

“The U.S.’ natural ability to lead in 5G as it did in LTE has absolutely been challenged," T-Mobile's Neville Ray said.

Mobile core networks are typically, but not always, unified by a single vendor by function, according to Cisco's Kishen Mangat.

The agreement effectively marks the end of Nokia’s long established RAN contract with Verizon in a shakeup that could be one of the most significant vendor losses in a

The battle lines have largely been drawn along divisions between the East and West, but there are some exceptions.

“We’re essentially delivering new versions of network cloud every three to four weeks now," AT&T's Ryan van Wyk said.

The double-digital annual growth rates predicted by Dell’Oro Group are being fueled by various factors.

“I view Telefónica as a leader in the European market on this front,” analyst Will Townsend said.

The platform includes updated versions and more integrated support for VMware’s cloud-native software stack and network automation services.

AT&T is deploying a 5G and multi-access edge computing network at IBM’s lab to develop and showcase new capabilities for enterprises.

“After all of this investment to enable remote everything, we will never go back to the way things were before,” Dell COO Jeff Clarke said.

“It’s been an honor to lead this insurgent company over the past decade,” Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey said.

"This is not moving fast enough. This is moving at telco speed, not cloud speed," analyst Chris Nicoll said.

The move follows a significant overhaul in June that saw Aruba enter the edge market with a cloud-native platform.

Flexibility is an attractive outcome of network virtualization, and Verizon intends to create repeatable processes that can scale with multiple vendors.

TSMC and Microsoft claim they can fuel a new category of electronics design automation workloads by boosting computational power in the cloud.

RAN vendor influence in the O-RAN Alliance is effectively precluding operators from directing the work as originally intended, ONF's Timon Sloane said.