Verizon has announced two new partnerships to address the private cellular networks market – with Microsoft Azure and Nokia. In both cases, these alliances will extend and strengthen the US operator’s offering in enterprise 5G/edge platforms and services. Also in both cases, they may help Verizon neutralize the competitive threat from two companies which have their eyes firmly set on the growing private cellular opportunity. Both Nokia and Microsoft are developing platforms that are currently offered mainly in collaboration with operators, but which could just as easily squeeze out the MNO, as more private networks become enabled by unlicensed spectrum and by core and access networks deployed in the cloud. The private network provider landscape is becoming complicated. Verizon Business’s…