The UK has quietly dropped open RAN from the centre of its network strategy and turned back to Ericsson and Nokia for radio equipment. That reversal, reported by Light Reading, marks a decisive shift from the position Westminster staked out only a few years ago, when open interfaces and new entrant vendors were presented as the answer to Britain's reliance on a small pool of incumbent suppliers.

The turn matters for practitioners. It signals that open RAN, in the UK market at least, is no longer the default path for radio network refreshes. Procurement teams can expect fewer mandates to split the radio stack across multiple vendors.

Why did the UK back open RAN in the first place?

The policy had a clear origin. Concern about dependence on a narrow vendor set, sharpened by the ban on Huawei equipment in Britain's 5G networks, pushed the government to champion open RAN as a diversification tool. Operators were encouraged, and in some cases expected, to trial and deploy radio gear built on interoperable standards rather than single-vendor integrated platforms.

At the time, this looked like a growth market for challengers. Startups and specialist vendors positioned themselves for a share of UK radio spend that had historically flowed to the two Nordic incumbents.

What has actually changed?

The title of the Light Reading piece states the outcome plainly: the UK forgot open RAN and learned to love Ericsson and Nokia. The commercial reality has reasserted itself. Integrated vendor platforms still deliver the performance, integration and support economics that large national operators want, and the incumbents have retained that business.

For smaller vendors, the implication is blunt. The UK is no longer the showcase market open RAN advocates once promised.

What does this mean for operators and vendors?

Several practical consequences follow:

• UK operators can plan radio upgrades around established Ericsson and Nokia roadmaps rather than multi-vendor integration projects.
• Open RAN suppliers must look elsewhere for reference deployments and revenue scale.
• Regulators and policymakers face questions about whether diversification goals remain achievable through procurement pressure alone.

The episode also serves as a market test. Where open RAN adoption has advanced elsewhere, it has generally done so on cost or coverage grounds in specific deployment scenarios, not because governments wished it into being.

Britain's retreat suggests policy enthusiasm alone cannot override operator procurement calculus. Unless economics shift, Ericsson and Nokia look set to keep the UK radio market they were once expected to lose.