And then there were four – the Big Five mobile network vendors are reduced to a quartet, though Cisco will be hoping that its new alliance with Ericsson will admit it to the inner circle, while Samsung and NEC remain hopeful of harnessing virtualization to improve their RAN business. But the fight is really a three-way one now, of course, with Nokia setting out its Mobile World Congress stall for the first time as the owner of Alcatel-Lucent, and Ericsson set to reveal more about that Cisco partnership – while Huawei looms over them both. Both European companies stuck with recent tradition and revealed highlights of their MWC announcements well in advance, though both promise further news in Barcelona itself.…