(Telecompaper) The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) announced the formation of the SD-RAN project (Software Defined Radio Access Network) to pursue the creation of open source software platforms for mobile 4G and 5G RAN deployments. Initially, the project will focus on building an open source Near Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller (nRT-RIC) compatible with the O-RAN architecture. Initial support for the project comes from AT&T, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Intel, NTT, Radisys and Sercomm.