Samsung Electronics and O₂ Telefónica today announced that the companies have launched their first virtualized RAN (vRAN) and Open RAN commercial site in Germany. It is the first time that Samsung’s 5G vRAN solution is being used in a commercial network in Germany. The site is now operating in Landsberg am Lech, Bavaria, providing high-performance and reliable 4G and 5G services to customers. In the coming months, the companies will expand the vRAN and Open RAN network to seven additional sites in the region, aiming to further extend the Open RAN footprint.

This milestone builds on the companies’ joint initiative, announced in October 2023, where they agreed to develop a roadmap for several tests of vRAN and Open RAN technologies. Following the extensive trials, O₂ Telefónica and Samsung are now progressing from lab to field with the launch of this first commercial site.

▲ O2 Telefónica and Samsung switched on their first vRAN and Open RAN commercial site in Germany

“We are taking another big step in our Open RAN journey. Together with Samsung, we are utilizing the latest Open RAN technologies in our mobile network. On the way to the network of the future, we are integrating new network solutions to provide our customers with outstanding connectivity. Open RAN is a building block that can help us to automate our network, deploy new updates faster and use network components more flexibly,” said Mallik Rao, Chief Technology & Information Officer of O₂ Telefónica.

“Samsung is setting new standards for excellence in the telecommunications industry with our innovative vRAN and Open RAN capabilities. Celebrating Telefónica’s 100th anniversary, we are proud to be the key partner for O₂ Telefónica on their trailblazing journey to usher in a new era of connectivity in Germany,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics.

Open RAN and vRAN: Bringing Greater Flexibility and Automation

O₂ Telefónica is building an even more efficient and future-proof network leveraging modern and advanced RAN technologies, open interfaces and automation capabilities. Open RAN enables greater flexibility in the mobile network. Based on open interfaces, operators can combine network components from different providers and integrate them into their network.

Software-centric vRAN helps the adoption of cloud-native architecture, allowing network operators to better automate functions, introduce new technologies and services to their networks quickly and efficiently. This is important for accelerating network buildouts and adopting new 5G applications, including use cases that require low response speeds, such as virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) or latency-critical applications for enterprises.

▲ O₂ Telefónica is providing reliable mobile connectivity to its customers, leveraging Samsung’s 4G and 5G vRAN and Open RAN solutions

Samsung’s Advanced and Proven Network Solutions

The companies have successfully switched on this first commercial site just three months after the initial shipment of 4G and 5G solutions, leveraging Samsung’s expertise and pre-validated ecosystem proven from large-scale commercial vRAN and Open RAN deployments across the globe.

For the initial deployments, Samsung’s offering includes its market-leading 4G and 5G vRAN 3.0 solution and O-RAN compliant radios supporting low- and mid-bands (700MHz, 800MHz, 1.8GHz 2.1GHz, 2.6GHz and 3.6GHz), including 64T64R Massive MIMO radios. Samsung’s advanced vRAN 3.0 features enhanced capabilities for improved energy efficiency, optimized performance and intelligent automation.

As the next step, the companies will introduce Samsung’s intelligent network automation solutions to control life cycle management — from deployment and operation to maintenance. This O-RAN compliant automation solution offers the ability to accelerate innovative software-based network rollouts by enabling automated deployment of thousands of network sites simultaneously.

About O₂ Telefónica
O₂ Telefónica is a leading full-service provider of telecommunications services for consumers and business customers. The portfolio of the core brand O₂ and various secondary and partner brands includes not only traditional telephony and Internet connections but also innovative digital services in the area of the Internet of Things and data analysis. In mobile communications, O₂ Telefónica serves more than 45 million mobile lines (incl. M2M – as of December 31, 2023). No other network operator connects more people in this country. The company’s high-performance, award-winning mobile network reaches over 99% of the population. In the fixed network, O₂ Telefónica offers its customers the greatest technological diversity and geographical availability of any provider in Germany. In fiscal year 2023, the company generated revenues of EUR 8.6 billion with around 7,500 employees. The company is majority-owned by the Madrid-based Spanish telecommunications group Telefónica S.A., one of the largest telecommunications groups in the world.

Following TELUS’ selection of Samsung as its 5G network vendor in June 2020, this revolutionary approach to infrastructure deployment embodies the essence of collaboration, bringing together manufacturers and providers to create a modular, state-of-the-art wireless network. It is also one of the first truly virtualized Open RAN deployments within a complex, brownfield network environment.

With an Open RAN, TELUS is able to use components from different manufacturers that best meet its needs, while a virtualized radio access network (vRAN) allows the use of software instead of hardware. This provides TELUS with faster access to the latest technologies as they become available, helping enhance customer experiences and fuel network innovation, while increasing opportunities for equipment vendors.

“This is a very exciting milestone for TELUS and the industry overall, as we now have the most flexible way to offer a diversified set of services to Canadians, unlocking new levels of mobile experiences,” said Nazim Benhadid, Chief Technology Officer at TELUS. “We are proud to be the first Canadian telecommunications company to integrate this cutting-edge technology, together with Samsung and our other partners.”

“Innovation is not a result, but a continuous process that transforms our daily lives,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “TELUS and Samsung have been spearheading a meaningful transformation in mobile communications and we look forward to continuing to unleash the full benefits of software-centric innovation, by advancing our industry-leading vRAN and Open RAN.”

The companies have extensively tested both the vRAN and Open RAN rollout in select Canadian markets with excellent results, validating the telco-grade performance and reliability of multi-vendor Open RAN technology, powered by Samsung’s vRAN solutions. Commercial deployment will begin in the first half of this year and a large-scale network rollout is expected to begin mid-2024.

For this expanded collaboration, Samsung will deliver its versatile vRAN software and proven Open RAN compliant solutions, including its 64T64R Massive MIMO radios, as well as the support for third-party radio integration. Samsung’s solutions include its latest vRAN 3.0 for 4G and 5G, which features enhanced capabilities for improved energy savings, optimized performance and intelligent automation via Samsung’s Service Management and Orchestration (SMO). Samsung’s AI-based SMO will help TELUS accelerate vRAN rollouts at scale by enabling automated deployment of thousands of network sites simultaneously. It will also provide TELUS with a comprehensive set of capabilities for end-to-end automation for multi-party solutions, enabling easier deployment, operation and optimization of their network.

TELUS’ bold approach to embrace a multi-vendor Open RAN brownfield deployment leverages other ecosystem collaborations as well. Cloud infrastructure will be provided by Wind River, tapping the company’s experience in real-time operating systems and cloud-native, distributed edge platforms. Additionally, Hewlett Packard Enterprise will deliver HPE ProLiant DL110 Gen11 servers featuring 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor with Intel vRAN Boost, that are workload optimized for Open RAN while being open and flexible, providing the foundation for a Distributed Unit (DU).

“vRAN and Open RAN remain at the forefront of network transformation, with Samsung continuing to demonstrate leadership in proving virtualized Open RAN’s ability to deliver high performance and efficiency in commercial 5G networks,” said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President and Analyst at the Dell’Oro Group. “Introducing vRAN and Open RAN into the Canadian market with TELUS represents another formidable step in the re-shaping of the RAN for long-term advantage.”

About TELUS

TELUS (TSX: T, NYSE: TU) is a dynamic, world-leading communications technology company with more than $18 billion in annual revenue and over 18 million customer connections spanning wireless, data, IP, voice, television, entertainment, video and security. Our social purpose is to leverage our global-leading technology and compassion to drive social change and enable remarkable human outcomes. Our longstanding commitment to putting our customers first fuels every aspect of our business, making us a distinct leader in customer service excellence and loyalty. The numerous, sustained accolades TELUS has earned over the years from independent, industry-leading network insight firms showcase the strength and speed of TELUS’ global-leading networks, reinforcing our commitment to provide Canadians with access to superior technology that connects us to the people, resources and information that make our lives better.

Operating in 32 countries around the world, TELUS International (TSX and NYSE: TIXT) is a leading digital customer experience innovator that designs, builds and delivers next-generation solutions, including AI and content moderation, for global and disruptive brands across strategic industry verticals, including tech and games, communications and media, eCommerce and fintech, banking, financial services and insurance, healthcare and others.

TELUS Health is a global healthcare leader, which provides employee and family primary and preventive healthcare and wellbeing solutions. Our TELUS team, along with our 100,000 health professionals, are leveraging the combination of TELUS’ strong digital and data analytics capabilities with our unsurpassed client service to dramatically improve remedial, preventive and mental health outcomes covering more than 69 million lives, and growing, around the world. As the largest provider of digital solutions and digital insights of its kind, TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods enables efficient and sustainable production from seed to store, helping improve the safety and quality of food and other goods in a way that is traceable to end consumers.

Driven by our determination and vision to connect all citizens for good, our deeply meaningful and enduring philosophy to give where we live has inspired TELUS and our team to contribute $1.6 billion, including 2.2 million days of service since 2000. This unprecedented generosity and unparalleled volunteerism have made TELUS the most giving company in the world. Together, let’s make the future friendly.

For more information about TELUS, please visit telus.com, follow us at @TELUSNews on X and @Darren_Entwistle on Instagram.

“Samsung has been raising the bar on what’s possible with vRAN and Open RAN, and we are delighted to work with Vodafone and Orange to be part of the first Open RAN sharing initiative in Romania,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “As we continue to expand our footprint across Europe, including the recent large-scale Open RAN deployments in the U.K., we continue to push our innovative boundaries, empowering networks in Europe.”

Following Vodafone UK’s Open RAN deployment and the successful integration tests in Orange’s Open RAN lab in France, Samsung provided its multi-RAT vRAN software as well as Open RAN-compliant radios for this initiative. As part of their pilot project, both operators have already achieved successful 4G calls over their respective Open RAN sharing sites and will soon introduce 2G, which has already been tested successfully in the lab, and then 5G. It will be the first time 2G is fully integrated within a commercial Open RAN sharing environment in Europe.

Earlier this year, Vodafone and Orange announced their intention to trial Open RAN with RAN sharing across Europe. By allowing the sharing of network components, RAN sharing helps reduce hardware costs, energy consumption and the need for duplicate sites. RAN sharing will help advance wide-scale Open RAN adoption in Europe.

This milestone represents the capabilities of Open RAN, to modernize legacy hardware-based mobile networks, bringing more sustainability and intelligence to the RAN, as well as the ability to more quickly and efficiently introduce new services.

Samsung has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions, including chipsets, radios and cores. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung drives the industry to advance 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio, from vRAN 3.0, Open RAN, Core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools. The company currently provides network solutions to mobile operators that deliver connectivity to hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

The two companies have completed several rounds of tests at Samsung’s lab to verify high-capacity and telco-grade performance using FDD bands and TDD Massive MIMO wide-bands, while significantly reducing power consumption. In this joint collaboration, Samsung used its versatile vRAN software integrated with the new AMD EPYC 8004 processors, focused on telco and intelligent edge. During technical verification, the EPYC 8004 processors combined with Samsung’s vRAN solutions delivered optimized cell capacity per server as well as high power efficiency.

“This technical collaboration demonstrates Samsung’s commitment to delivering network flexibility and high performance for service providers by building a larger vRAN and Open RAN ecosystem,” said Henrik Jansson, Vice President and Head of SI Business Group, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung has been at the forefront of unleashing the full potential of 5G vRAN technology to meet rising demands, and we look forward to collaborating with industry leaders like AMD to provide operators the capabilities to transform their networks.”

“By integrating our AMD EPYC processors with Samsung’s leading vRAN solution, operators will have a powerful tool with the incredible energy efficiency and balanced performance needed for this environment,” said Lynn Comp, Corporate Vice President, Technical Marketing, Server Business at AMD. “It’s great to be collaborating with Samsung in 5G vRAN solutions to leverage our market-leading products for the data center and tackle key challenges of the telco edge and RAN environment.”

Samsung will continue working with AMD to facilitate the acceleration of vRAN and Open RAN for 5G and drive new innovation for next-generation networks.

Samsung’s vRAN Ecosystem

Samsung has made significant strides with its vRAN ecosystem, expanding collaboration with industry-leading providers spanning a range of technologies, including: processors, COTS servers, container platforms (CaaS), xHaul transport and cloud solutions. This strong and growing ecosystem illustrates Samsung’s leadership in offering vRAN and Open RAN solutions that are reliable, sustainable and meet or exceed telco-grade performance. Samsung has proven its extensive expertise in commercial networks for Tier 1 operators in the North America, Europe and Asia.

Samsung has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions, including chipsets, radios and cores. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung drives the industry to advance 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio, from vRAN 3.0, Open RAN and Core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools. The company currently provides network solutions to mobile operators that deliver connectivity to hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

The SCO now supports automation of vRAN deployments on both private and public clouds, enabling network services to be provisioned across multiple cloud environments, and this multi-cloud capability offers a highly flexible scaling option for operators, tailored to various deployment scenarios.

Samsung delivered SCO for virtualized RAN to Tier One operators in Asia, Europe and North America, leveraging the solution to bring greater efficiencies to their network deployment and operation.

“Automation adds incredible value for operators who are rapidly shifting to software-centric networks. With our enhanced Samsung Cloud Orchestrator, operators have a necessary platform to deploy and manage their vRAN with maximum efficiency and greater flexibility,” said June Moon, Executive Vice President, Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “This is part of Samsung’s goal to leverage our wide-scale commercial vRAN deployment experience to develop and introduce intuitive tools that take vRAN to the next level.”

For virtualized and Open RAN network operators, SCO enables them to simplify manually intensive tasks from the very start of network creation. It is an integrated automation platform that supports end-to-end process coordination through a centralized portal, where users can view and control the status of their network in one unified platform.

The key process-improving capabilities delivered by SCO include the following:

• Onboarding: Operators can leverage this solution to prepare packages to be installed at each site and automatically perform deployment tasks on a scheduled basis. This allows operators to easily implement their own CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) environment. It verifies package version and file formats and automatically checks for missing components in the package.
• Deployment: Operators can distribute numerous vRAN software packages and containers needed to launch large groups of cell sites with one click from a centralized location — reducing the overall deployment time. It also helps simplify the configuration process of each cell site through centralized management of tasks.
• Operation: SCO can provide automatic vRAN software upgrades, healing and scaling, to ensure the resilience of each network, enabling operators to maintain optimal network conditions by performing these tasks remotely on a massive scale.

Samsung has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions including chipsets, radios and core. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung drives the industry to advance 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio from virtualized RAN and Core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools. The company is currently providing network solutions to mobile operators that deliver connectivity to hundreds of millions of users around the world.

“Samsung is a key player in the DISH Wireless Open RAN ecosystem, created in collaboration with additional Open RAN leaders like Dell, VMware, AWS and others,” said Marc Rouanne, EVP and Chief Network Officer, DISH Wireless. “Samsung’s 5G vRAN solutions and our shared innovation process allow DISH Wireless to continue the DISH 5G multi-vendor, open and interoperable cloud-native network buildout, as we progress to covering 70 percent of the U.S. population.”

▲ Deployment and testing of the Samsung-supported sites for the DISH 5G network is underway.

Since the announcement of their multi-year agreement in May 2022, DISH Wireless and Samsung advanced their collaboration — progressing from field tests to successfully activating the first live Samsung sites within the DISH Wireless 5G network. For this rollout, Samsung provided its comprehensive portfolio of 5G solutions, including its virtualized distributed unit (vDU), virtualized central unit (vCU) and Open RAN-compliant 5G radios, which support the DISH spectrum bands. Samsung also built new dual-band and tri-band Open RAN-compliant radios specific for this deployment.

“DISH Wireless is an innovator in mobile technologies and we are thrilled to reach new heights of connectivity together, validating the immense potential that virtualization and openness can bring to the industry,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business, Samsung Electronics. “This milestone advances the wide-scale deployment of Samsung’s vRAN in the U.S. and we look forward to continuing our work with DISH Wireless to accelerate 5G expansion and lead the delivery of next-generation connectivity across the country.”

DISH Wireless and Samsung will continue to innovate within the DISH Open RAN architecture to provide their customers with reliable fast service and set the stage for DISH Wireless to offer enterprises a broad range of new services and enhanced capabilities.

About DISH Wireless

DISH Wireless, a subsidiary of DISH Network Corporation, is changing the way the world communicates with America’s First Smart Network. In 2020, the company became a nationwide U.S. wireless carrier through the acquisition of Boost Mobile. DISH continues to innovate in wireless, building the nation’s first virtualized, O-RAN 5G broadband network, and is inclusive of the Boost Infinite, Boost Mobile and Gen Mobile wireless brands. DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) is a Fortune 200 company.

¹ 24,000 delivered as of 12/31/2022

This builds upon the two companies’ 5G agreement previously-announced in March 2021, in which NTT DOCOMO selected Samsung as its 5G network solutions provider. Samsung now adds new radios — including 3.7GHz, 4.5GHz and 28GHz — to its existing 3.4GHz radio support for NTT DOCOMO.

This expanded portfolio from Samsung will enable NTT DOCOMO to leverage its broad range of spectrum across Japan to build a versatile 5G network for diversifying their services offered to consumers and businesses. The companies have also been testing the interoperability of these new radios with basebands from various vendors in NTT DOCOMO’s commercial network environment.

“We have been collaborating with Samsung since the beginning of 5G and through our Open RAN expansion, and we are excited to continue extending our scope of vision together,” said Masafumi Masuda, Vice President and General Manager of the Radio Access Network Development Department at NTT DOCOMO. “Solidifying our global leadership, we will continue to build momentum around our Open RAN innovation and to provide highly scalable and flexible networks to respond quickly to the evolving demands of our customers.”

“Japan is home to one of the world’s most densely populated areas with numerous skyscrapers and complex infrastructure. Samsung’s industry-leading 5G radios portfolio meets the demands of low-footprint, low-weight solutions, while also ensuring reliable service quality,” said Satoshi Iwao, Vice President and Head of Network Division at Samsung Electronics Japan. “As NTT DOCOMO continues to accelerate its Open RAN innovation, we look forward to working together to deliver a richer experience to consumers and generating new business opportunities.”

With today’s announcement, Samsung introduces its new 28GHz Radio Unit (RU) for the first time — as a new addition to its portfolio of leading mmWave solutions. This RU, which weighs less than 4.5kg (~10lbs), features a light and compact form factor with very low power consumption, enabling flexible deployments in various scenarios. Additionally, Samsung’s 3.4GHz, 3.7GHz and 4.5GHz radios are also Open RAN-compliant and designed to deliver high performance and reliability.

Samsung has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions including chipsets, radios and core. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung drives the industry to advance 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio from virtualized RAN and Core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools. The company is currently providing network solutions to mobile operators that deliver connectivity to hundreds of millions of users around the world.

About NTT DOCOMO

NTT DOCOMO, Japan’s leading mobile operator with over 85 million subscriptions, is one of the world’s foremost contributors to 3G, 4G and 5G mobile network technologies. Beyond core communications services, DOCOMO is challenging new frontiers in collaboration with a growing number of entities (“+d” partners), creating exciting and convenient value-added services that change the way people live and work. Under a medium-term plan toward 2020 and beyond, DOCOMO is pioneering a leading-edge 5G network to facilitate innovative services that will amaze and inspire customers beyond their expectations. https://www.docomo.ne.jp/english/.

“Samsung’s 5G solutions will play an integral role in our network expansion, giving us the flexibility to deploy our cloud-native network with software-based solutions that support advanced services and operational scalability,” said John Swieringa, president and chief operating officer, DISH Wireless. “We look forward to working with Samsung, whose industry leadership in vRAN and O-RAN innovation will help support our vision of delivering open, interoperable cloud-based 5G services to consumers and enterprises across the U.S.”

“Samsung is excited to join this 5G journey with DISH, a pioneer in bringing new experiences to households and businesses around the country, leveraging openness and virtualization that sit at the heart of network evolution,” said Mark Louison, executive vice president and head of the Networks Business, Samsung Electronics America. “Our advanced 5G vRAN and radio solutions bring telco-grade quality and cloud-based agility together, building on these benefits to enable more customers to experience the full value of commercial 5G Open RAN.”

Samsung Networks Business will supply DISH Wireless with its 5G and RAN solutions, vRAN software and a variety of O-RAN compliant radio units, including Massive MIMO radios. Samsung’s vRAN can operate on any commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) server, while still delivering performance on par with traditional hardware-based equipment. With its cloud-native architecture, DISH Wireless’ Open RAN deployment is based on open interfaces, allowing for multi-vendor interoperability and various deployment scenarios. The Samsung radios will also support all of DISH’s Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) spectrum bands (including n71, n29, n66, n70, n48 and n77).¹

Samsung and DISH 5G Network Collaboration

Handsets and Devices

DISH and Samsung’s collaboration will extend to retail wireless customers, providing them with leading-edge 5G devices, connecting customers to DISH Wireless’ SMART 5G network.

“Our work with DISH Wireless is bringing many of Samsung’s innovative mobile products and services to even more customers on the DISH network,” said Jude Buckley, executive vice president of the Mobile Business, Samsung Electronics America. “We are excited to continue to work together to bring Samsung’s powerful mobile products and services, which are compatible with the DISH network, to more customers.”

“Together, we’ll create solutions to bring DISH Wireless’ smart network to life for retail and enterprise customers, enhancing their productivity, enriching their connection to people and smart technology, improving their business operations and giving our customers control over their 5G services,” said Stephen Bye, executive vice president and chief commercial officer, DISH Wireless.

DISH is currently testing its 5G network using the Samsung Galaxy S22, and plans to continue using Samsung phones as a reference platform throughout the network deployment process.

About DISH
DISH Network Corporation is a connectivity company. Since 1980, it has served as a disruptive force, driving innovation and value on behalf of consumers. Through its subsidiaries, the company provides television entertainment and award-winning technology to millions of customers with its satellite DISH TV and streaming SLING TV services. In 2020, the company became a nationwide U.S. wireless carrier through the acquisition of Boost Mobile. DISH continues to innovate in wireless, building the nation’s first virtualized, O-RAN 5G broadband network. DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) is a Fortune 200 company.

¹ n71 (600MHz), n29 (700MHz), n66 (AWS: 1.7GHz/2.1GHz), n70 (AWS: 1.7GHz/1.9GHz), n48 (CBRS: 3.55GHz-3.7GHz), n77 (C-Band: 3.7GHz-3.98GHz)

Samsung is the global leader in the fully-virtualized 5G RAN market.¹ The company’s achievement was driven by its 5G vRAN solution, which has been deployed around the world, making Samsung the only major network vendor to have delivered fully-virtualized commercial RAN deployments in North America, Europe and Asia.

Samsung delivered its 5G vRAN solutions for a large-scale commercial network service in the U.S. that launched in December 2020, providing reliable mobile services to millions of users. The company continues to expand its 5G vRAN footprint, with recent milestones including:

• Achieved 2.25Gbps on a single user device with dual connectivity using vRAN and Massive MIMO radios on C-band spectrum in June 2021
• Successfully launched commercial vRAN over C-band using 64T64R Massive MIMO radios in the U.S. in January 2022
• Switched on the UK’s first 5G Open RAN site and the world’s first 5G Standalone (SA) Open RAN site in Japan — both powered by Samsung’s vRAN

Samsung’s commercially-proven network solutions range from traditional RAN to virtualized RAN to Open RAN — supporting operators’ 5G path of choice. To advance virtualization and openness, Samsung’s 5G vRAN splits the baseband functions into a fully disaggregated virtualized Distributed Unit (vDU) and virtualized Central Unit (vCU). The key to this disaggregated architecture is that the RAN software is separated from customized hardware and runs on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers. Samsung’s vRAN also supports O-RAN specifications, “opening up” interfaces between baseband unit and radios, allowing integration from different vendors.

“While many vendors claim they support Open RAN by starting with the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), in reality, this is still far from commercialization in large-scale networks and sidesteps the most important part of the Open RAN revolution — which starts from the disaggregation of hardware and software in the baseband, and also involves opening of the fronthaul,” said Woojune Kim, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics.

Samsung’s vRAN solution fully disaggregates the hardware and software in the baseband, and can support the open fronthaul interface. The company’s O-RAN compliant 5G vRAN solutions are deployed commercially in Japan and U.K. networks, offering seamless integration with other vendors’ radios.

Added Kim: “What differentiates Samsung is a combination of consistent innovation and large-scale commercial experience with leading Tier One operators around the world. This has helped us lead the advancement of vRAN and Open RAN beyond lab tests and field trials, and into major commercial markets. Now, the creation of this vRAN ecosystem will drive innovation to the next level, unlocking numerous opportunities ahead for network industry players and helping operators scale their businesses.”

Innovating Together for Success

As a pioneer and leader in vRAN technology, Samsung has brought together various companies for collaboration in this ecosystem — starting with Dell, HPE, Intel, Red Hat and Wind River. Samsung has tested and validated interoperability with each company platform, which collectively holds a comprehensive view of the network evolution at every step of the development process. The ecosystem will help in the preparation for commercial deployments, including conducting various activities in Samsung’s lab — aligning solution roadmaps from multiple vendors, fostering a fully interoperable approach to vRAN and leading the design process of an end-to-end vRAN solution.

Companies joining this vRAN ecosystem include:

Dell Technologies

Dell Technologies’ telecom solutions bolster the open ecosystem and help communications service providers (CSPs) transform to cloud-native vRAN networks. Samsung’s vRAN solution, combined with Dell’s carrier-grade, telecom infrastructure, will help CSPs around the globe to affordably build and deploy open networks. Dell’s global supply chain and telecom services seamlessly support network deployments of any scale.

Dennis Hoffman, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Dell Technologies Telecom Systems Business said, “Samsung’s commitment to advancing the vRAN ecosystem will foster new innovative services and business opportunities for communications service providers and enterprises. Our collaboration with Samsung and other partners is helping to develop an open ecosystem of technologies that can deliver the performance and reliability network operators demand.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

HPE continues a legacy of over 30 years of experience in the telecom industry. More than 300 telco customers across 160 countries take advantage of HPE’s open telco solutions, offered through the HPE Communications Technology Group (CTG), to evolve to a 5G ready, cloud-native, service-based architecture. As the global edge-to-cloud company, HPE’s experience in enterprise IT and hybrid cloud helps deliver a cloud transformation and secure, carrier-grade, standards-based infrastructure to telecommunications networks.

Phillip Cutrone, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Global OEM & Service Providers, at HPE said, “HPE looks forward to continuing our longstanding collaboration with Samsung by welcoming a new opportunity to deliver optimized 5G solutions for our customers. By using HPE ProLiant servers, the world’s trusted servers, to deliver highly dense, small form factor RAN workload-optimized compute platforms, HPE is playing a pivotal role in enabling the Samsung vRAN ecosystem that will further advance 5G experiences.”

Intel

Samsung has teamed up with Intel to support global service providers in virtualizing their 5G RAN and driving new services innovation based on Intel Xeon Scalable processors. Samsung recently announced the deployment of its fully virtualized, cloud-native vRAN solution to support the UK’s first 5G Open RAN network, as well as 5G vRAN in Japan. Both Intel and Samsung have optimized their solutions to deliver outstanding virtualized performance and flexibility to meet service provider requirements around the world.

Cristina Rodriguez, Vice President and General Manager, Wireless Access Network Division at Intel said, “The shift to virtualized RAN is one of the biggest transformations impacting the industry today. Intel’s collaboration with Samsung illustrates the strength of software-defined solutions in delivering flexibility and scalability in real world deployments.”

Red Hat

Red Hat is collaborating with Samsung to deliver 5G network solutions built on Red Hat’s proven open hybrid cloud portfolio, including Red Hat OpenShift – the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform. With this collaboration, Samsung and Red Hat are helping service providers drive 5G adoption and realize the benefits of vRAN. Samsung’s 5G vRAN solutions coupled with Red Hat’s open source, cloud-native solutions aim to extend 5G-based use cases by supporting consistent horizontal platforms from the core to the edge for customers to more easily deploy vRAN.

Darrell Jordan-Smith, Senior Vice President, TME & Industries at Red Hat said, “Red Hat is committed to building a bridge for customers to embrace RAN transformation, connecting business needs with the underlying technologies through an open ecosystem of partners. At the heart of the 5G and RAN evolution is cloud-native, open source innovation that helps form the foundation for future connectivity. Samsung’s leading 5G network solutions powered by Red Hat hybrid cloud technology offers service providers and their customers a flexible, scalable and reliable solution to successfully implement RAN at the edge, improving business agility to respond to opportunities more rapidly.”

Wind River

Wind River Studio provides a fully cloud-native, Kubernetes- and container-based architecture, based on open source, for the development, deployment, operations and servicing of distributed edge networks at scale. It delivers a foundation for a geographically distributed managed solution able to simplify Day 1 and Day 2 operations by providing single-pane–of-glass (SPoG), zero-touch automated management of thousands of nodes, no matter their physical location. Studio addresses the complex challenges of deploying and managing a physically distributed, cloud-native vRAN infrastructure to provide traditional RAN performance in a vRAN deployment.

Avijit Sinha, Chief Product Officer, Wind River said, “A leader in the early 5G vRAN landscape, Wind River is delivering mature production-ready offerings with Samsung based on proven Wind River Studio technology that is live in deployment with Tier One operators. Together with Samsung, Wind River can provide flexible, secure, reliable and ultra-low latency solutions that extend across the 5G cloud core and edge to support new use cases in an increasingly intelligent systems world.”

Samsung continues to expand its ecosystem with additional partners with industry-leading expertise in order to meet operator needs for more flexible and scalable networks.

¹ Based on internal analysis of third-party market size estimates