Mavenir has incorporated EdgeQ’s programmable “base station-on-a-chip” to enter the field-upgradeable small cells market, targeting both the neutral host and urban densification markets. As often, there is jargon to unpack and claims of uniqueness to debunk, which is a pity, because it is an attractive package that will gain some traction given the current growth in its target fields. The system is described as being software-defined and cloud-native, two terms we dislike because the first is rather meaningless and the second is a surrogate term for modern development methods for deployment offsite in shared public or private networks, or cloud infrastructures. Most computing has strictly been software defined for decades, certainly since the first PCs. It is true that in…