Samsung’s latest announcement, that it has operated a call over a virtualized RAN (vRAN) set-up using the Intel Granite Rapids processor, has given the somewhat background tech a lift in the wireless world. The test is a promising endorsement of Intel’s Granite Rapid suite of products and validates single-server vRAN deployments for the first time. The news could tip the balance and seed some growth in the vRAN space. Samsung announced last week that it has completed the industry’s first commercial call using Samsung’s vRAN solution with the Intel Xeon 6700P-B processor series, with up to 72 cores, “on a Tier 1 US operator’s live network.” The operator is likely to be Verizon, since Samsung is known to work with Verizon and…