[kanisae]

In the past I worked at a mid level 4G provider in the US who had to deal with the larger providers on a regular basis. I was always astounded at how little they knew about their own networks.

Regarding the articles statement of providers wanting an "all-in-one" solution, I have seen that in person, where management forced it, found it was horrible and then gave in and let us build the mixed vendor solution that worked well. I've personally mixed enode-b's from 2 different vendors to 3 different vendors SGW's and a different vendors PGW with no issues.

The "One Throat To Choke" idea doesn't work if your business depends on that throat to operate so you end up with the vendor calling the shots instead of the business.

[sgt101]

>>The "One Throat To Choke" idea

but it sounds soooooo good in meetings !

[g_p]

The bigger they are, the harder they fall...

On the whole, the technical standards should allow the kind of interoperability you described. That's the kind of fun real-world engineering that techies love. The bean-counters don't, because it's more devices needing support packages, it's more suppliers on the books, and ultimately it's probably (slightly) less profit than buying a single box.

I've seen big household name operators in Europe stop even pretending they're doing the work, and straight up pass on contact details and a mobile number for the person at their tier-1 vendor partner, so you can liaise directly with them.

It seems in these "5G" days even more than before, operators are retreating into the business of connectivity service, and leaving more and more for their vendor partners to do. When you're not even hiding the fact to a client that they may as well speak directly to the vendor, that says it all(!)