Well articulated Mark. Atleast 2 of my customers think this is the way to go given that the (e)NodeBs are more a commodity now. In fact as we speak Facebook has a similar set up made available to an operator here with a few MiMo antennas coming out of a regular telco grade server claiming to be truly software defined radio (with multi vendor & multi band support).

May be a good idea to have a Wiki opened up on this if there isn't one already.