Samsung and Sprint Deploy 5G New Radio (NR) Solutions in Preparation for Commercial 5G Service Roll Out

Samsung’s 5G NR solution completes field testing, readies for rollout in one of Sprint’s first 5G Cities, Chicago, IL

Network includes Samsung’s massive MIMO technology enabling simultaneous support of 4G LTE and 5G NR

Samsung 5G-ready massive MIMO equipment used in Sprint’s 5G network in Chicago

Samsung Electronics America today announced at Mobile World Congress 2019 that Sprint is using Samsung’s 5G New Radio (NR) solutions as the carrier prepares to launch its commercial 5G service.

The new 5G NR solution is enabled by adding Samsung software and a channel card to Samsung’s existing Massive MIMO technology, which has been providing enhanced 4G LTE service in U.S. markets on Sprint’s 2.5GHz TDD network since last year. This allows both 4G LTE and 5G commercial service on Sprint’s network using the ‘split mode’ capabilities of Samsung’s MIMO solution, offering a simple, cost-effective transition to 5G. The solution is capable of achieving more than 1.5Gbps throughput speeds.

Samsung’s 5G NR solution will be in the commercial network for one of Sprint’s first 5G cities, Chicago, IL, scheduled to launch commercially in May. Sprint announced their 5G plans today in a press conference at Mobile World Congress.

“Last year, we were proud to deliver enhanced speeds and capacity to Sprint’s customers through Samsung’s massive MIMO solution,” said Lyle Nyffeler, Vice President, Networks Division, Samsung Electronics America. “Today, we are advancing our technology collaboration by taking this next step with Sprint to deliver commercial 5G NR, and supporting their 5G strategy through this milestone in Chicago.”

“Our collaboration on massive MIMO has delivered significant LTE capacity and speed enhancements,” said Scott Santi, SVP of Network Deployment and Operations at Sprint. “With 5G, we look forward to giving Sprint customers even greater experiences from gaming and entertainment services, to IoT and business applications.”

Samsung’s massive MIMO technology plays a key role in Sprint’s 5G evolution. Thesolution’s split-mode capabilities use the same radio for 4G LTE and 5G NR, offering simple transitions to 5G without requiring tower climbs. Additionally, as subscribers purchase 5G phones, excellent performance quality is retained as 4G capacity transitions to 5G. The MIMO technology features 64T/64R antenna array, beamforming, and carrier aggregation, helping operators inject new capacity into networks without purchasing more spectrum or adding new base stations. The system includes 128antenna elements within a compact form factor.

Using Sprint’s 2.5GHz spectrum, Samsung’s 5G solution will drive hyper-streaming and ultra-fast downloading on 5G smartphones, as well as enhanced experiences with mobile gaming, mixed reality (AR and VR) applications and new enterprise use cases.

At Samsung Networks MWC 2019 booth (Hall 2 (2M20)), the company will showcase its commercial 2.5GHz 64T64R Massive MIMO unit (MMU), as well as a video of the 5G field testing with Sprint in Chicago, IL. For further information on Samsung’s Networks solutions visit here.