At last year’s Mobile World Congress, there were some interesting demonstrations of Cloud-RAN, from the groundbreakers like China Mobile and Telefonica, but a general assumption that this was a technology for the future, and virtualization would be more immediately relevant, to the vast majority of operators, in the core or CPE than the RAN. This year, there will still be those high-concept demoes, but there is also set to be a far more short term, pragmatic approach to Cloud-RAN. This reflects that the architecture is ticking boxes for a wider range of MNOs, with shorter timescales in mind, than originally expected. But for most, it will not be about re-architecting the wide area macro network around a whole new approach…