Verizon reached a significant milestone when it recently completed a fully virtualized 5G data session, working with Samsung in its recently acquired C-band spectrum. This made Verizon the first US operator – and one of the first in the world – to have a full 5G macro vRAN, complete with Massive MIMO, commercially ready (though it cannot be activated until the first tranche of C-band spectrum is cleared for use later this year). The combination of vRAN and Massive MIMO is an area where Samsung has made significant progress and it claims to have been the first vendor to support full interworking between vRAN and 64T64R antenna arrays. This appears to have been a major factor in winning its recent…