Operators and their vendors spend a lot of time defining the standards on which they will base their equipment and services, like with 5G and most every other “G” that came before. In the open source community as well, they’re coming together in places like the Open Network Foundation (ONF) to create reference designs that form the basis of what they’re trying to do.
In another sense, it’s very much the Wild West in that there’s a sense of disruption from open source circles that threaten the long-time global incumbents of wireless infrastructure—think the Ericsson, Nokia and Huaweis of the world—but pose great opportunities for smaller companies to get a cut of the business.
