One of the biggest challenges for Open RAN has been its inability to support very high-performance 5G radios to the same standard as traditional integrated architectures. Given a choice between supporting Massive MIMO (mMIMO) radio/antennas for high-traffic urban 5G sites, and implementing virtualized and open networks, most operators would choose the former, leaving Open RAN confined to less demanding environments such as rural or enterprise networks. Recent additions to the O-RAN Alliance’s Open Fronthaul (OFH) specifications provided hope that this critical barrier to adoption would soon be lowered. But Verizon, one of the most significant investors in trials of virtualized RAN, remains unconvinced that the cloud-based networks can match integrated RAN in support for Massive MIMO. This is a blow,…