To maximize and bring the power of AI into Radio Access Networks (RAN), Samsung has made significant technological progress leveraging its in-house AI and radio expertise since the beginning of 2024. One of the pivotal milestones achieved was the interoperability between Samsung’s O-RAN compliant virtualized RAN (vRAN) and NVIDIA’s accelerated computing, which took place in Samsung Research’s lab in late last year. Samsung has successfully demonstrated a proof-of-concept to verify how NVIDIA’s accelerated computing can be seamlessly integrated into software-based networks to help enhance AI capabilities.

This achievement further solidifies Samsung’s strides in moving ahead with its unique innovation of combining AI and RAN. With the baseline, Samsung can seamlessly deliver AI-RAN by integrating its vRAN (virtualized Distributed Unit, vDU) with NVIDIA’s accelerated computing into a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) server where Samsung’s vRAN software is installed.

▲ At Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025, Samsung showcased its real-world vRAN combined with NVIDIA’s accelerated computing.

In addition, the companies will continue to explore the best-of-breed combinations of AI-RAN options leveraging Samsung vRAN with NVIDIA’s Grace CPU and/or GPU based AI platform using Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) technologies. All of these are optimal for each network deployment environment — from rural, sub-urban to dense urban.

At MWC 2025, Samsung presented its leadership in AI-For-RAN innovations, as exemplified through two AI-RAN demonstrations, endorsed by the AI-RAN Alliance and developed in collaboration with various members including NVIDIA. The demonstrations included AI-based physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) estimation and non-uniform modulation, showing a glimpse in innovative ways to infuse AI into mobile networks.

▲ (From left) NVIDIA Senior Vice President for Telecom Ronnie Vasishta and Samsung Electronics Executive Vice President & Head of R&D  June Moon

“While AI is reshaping the telecommunications landscape, Samsung is helping operators to build the right network architecture and environment where AI can thrive, all powered by our proven and AI-powered vRAN,” said June Moon, Executive Vice President, Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “This collaboration with NVIDIA signifies our continued efforts to expand GPU and CPU ecosystem, and we look forward to exploring more possibilities in the future.”

“AI-RAN is a critical technology that delivers transformative gains in network utilization, efficiency and performance, while enabling new AI services,” said Ronnie Vasishta, Senior Vice President for Telecom at NVIDIA. “Samsung is a frontrunner in AI-RAN development. Their vRAN expertise and software integrated with the NVIDIA’s AI accelerated computing will accelerate the path to AI-native wireless networks.”

As one of the founding members of the AI-RAN Alliance forged in 2024, Samsung is actively participating in advancing AI-RAN technologies with academic institutions and industry leaders like NVIDIA. As an elected Vice Chair of Board of Directors as well as the Working Group #3 (AI-on-RAN), Samsung is leading industry towards AI-powered next-generation networks.

Samsung’s end-to-end software-based network architecture is the optimal foundation to easily deploy and adopt AI across every layer of the network. As such, Samsung can empower operators with its flexible networks and sharpen their competitive edge to stay at the front of the AI era. This advancement opens doors for utilizing network infrastructure not only for mobile communications but also for processing general workloads, providing a data center-like network architecture that will present new business opportunities.

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 and applications. The company currently provides innovative network solutions to mobile operators and enterprises that deliver boundless connectivity to hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Samsung Electronics today announced that UScellular has enhanced its 5G network capabilities in the Mid-Atlantic region with Samsung’s 5G solutions. The companies have worked together to deploy a new network architecture using Samsung’s 5G mmWave and virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) solution to support UScellular’s growing fixed wireless access and mobile traffic. In November, the operator launched this new service in several markets in the region, already delivering elevated connectivity to its customers.

For the Mid-Atlantic markets, UScellular utilized Samsung’s 5G Compact Macro — a 3GPP-based distributed architecture solution — to enable mmWave connectivity, offering its customers fast, reliable mobile and broadband services. Compact Macro consolidates the baseband, radio and antenna into a single, lightweight form factor for swift and easy installation. Samsung’s mmWave technology allows the operator to access the expansive bandwidth in the 28GHz and 39GHz bands, which support ultra-high speeds and low latency. By leveraging Samsung’s advanced solutions, UScellular could rapidly enhance the 5G performance through multi-gigabit speeds.

“We’re excited to work with Samsung as we continue to enhance our next-generation network,” said Mike Dienhart, Vice President of Engineering and Network Operations, UScellular. “Tapping into the ultra-high bandwidth of the mmWave spectrum allows us to unleash new capabilities and deliver cutting-edge customer experiences. Samsung’s proven expertise in innovative 5G and vRAN makes them an ideal partner.”

Samsung is also offering its notable and widely used vRAN solution with Central Unit functionality to support UScellular’s virtualized network. Samsung’s vRAN provides the operator with additional bandwidth and advanced intelligence capabilities including energy saving features, while enabling the company to quickly scale capacity and efficiently deploy advanced services. This network advancement highlights UScellular’s commitment to leading 5G innovation.

“We’re extremely pleased that UScellular selected Samsung’s industry-leading mmWave and vRAN solutions as key enablers for their 5G network enhancement in this area,” said Wilf Norrlinger, Vice President, US Sales, Networks Business, Samsung Electronics America. “This collaboration showcases how our innovations in areas such as vRAN and mmWave are unlocking new capabilities. It’s exciting to collaborate with forward-thinking providers like UScellular and push the next-generation wireless to new frontiers.”

The companies have a strong working relationship and have been working together on new network configurations to support UScellular’s growing fixed wireless customer base.

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, including vRAN 3.0, Open RAN, core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools. The company currently provides innovative network solutions to mobile operators that deliver boundless connectivity to hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

About UScellular
UScellular is the fourth-largest full-service wireless carrier in the United States, providing national network coverage and industry-leading innovations designed to help customers stay connected to the things that matter most. The Chicago-based carrier provides a strong, reliable network supported by the latest technology and offers a wide range of communication services that enhance consumers’ lives, increase the competitiveness of local businesses and improve the efficiency of government operations. Through its After School Access Project, the company has donated more than $30 million in hotspots and service to help youth connect to reliable internet. To learn more about UScellular, visit one of its retail stores or www.uscellular.com. To get the latest news, visit newsroom.uscellular.com.

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.

Samsung Electronics, Juniper Networks^® (NYSE:JNPR) and Wind River^® have collaborated on a virtual cell site router (vCSR) to allow service providers to operate their networks with end-to-end virtualization. This software-based network ensures more flexibility, agility, sustainability and faster time-to-market (TTM) for the introduction of new services.

vCSR is part of a new architecture in which the distributed unit and CSR functions coexist as virtualized network elements on one server. In this joint effort, the companies integrated the Juniper Cloud-Native Router, a fully containerized network element, with the Samsung virtualized DU (vDU) on Wind River Studio Cloud Platform. By running multiple network elements on a single virtualized RAN (vRAN) server, the companies are essentially eliminating the need for physical router hardware typically deployed at a cell site and reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) for network deployments of 5G and beyond.

Compared to traditional networks, this software-based infrastructure offers a more resilient and intelligent mobile network. This development plays a pivotal role in realizing the potential of vRAN by fostering flexibility and interoperability among different components. By consolidating multiple software network elements on the same server, operators can benefit from the following:

• End-to-end automation with Samsung’s CognitiV Network Operations Suite: The solution supports plug-and-play deployment, management visibility, and massive software upgrades, delivering a more streamlined and efficient deployment and operation process.
• Greater agility and flexibility: Built on Software-Defined Networking principles, the virtualized architecture enables the greater scalability and flexibility needed to meet operators’ various network configurations and service demands.
• Ability to support diverse applications: With software-centric architecture, vCSR can support security applications such as firewalls and intelligently steer data flows.
• Reduced CapEx thanks to simplified deployment with less hardware: There is no need to purchase legacy hardware since it can be combined within the existing server with the vDU and other software platforms. It also frees up additional rack space.
• Reduced OpEx with energy savings: By eliminating the physical CSR hardware through server consolidation, approximately 30% of energy use can be saved.

“Leveraging our expertise in real-world vRAN deployments, Samsung, along with Juniper and Wind River, are paving the way for end-to-end virtualized networks across the world,” said Ji-Yun Seol, Vice President, Head of Product Strategy, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “With this revolutionary approach, we are giving operators the confidence to transform their networks and embrace virtual and open approaches.”

“The compelling objective of vRAN is the flexibility and agility it can bring to operators. Our Cloud-Native Router enables operational simplicity and economic flexibility, while delivering excellent performance. Today’s operators must focus obsessively on the user experiences they are delivering while managing costs, and Juniper’s collaboration with Samsung and Wind River is creating a solution that helps them to amortize 5G investments, build a sustainable infrastructure and create more attractive service offerings,” said Raj Yavatkar, SVP and CTO, Juniper Networks.

“As a leader in the 5G landscape that powers the majority of 5G vRAN/O-RAN deployments with global operators, our Wind River Studio is a purpose-built distributed cloud being used in production, at scale, for vRAN and Open RAN,” said Paul Miller, Chief Technology Officer, Wind River. “In collaboration with Samsung and Juniper, Wind River delivers on the promise of Open RAN, creating a path for substantial TCO reduction and new revenue opportunities for mobile operators.”

This innovative vCSR technology will be demonstrated at Mobile World Congress 2024 at the companies’ respective booths: Samsung (Hall 2, 2M20), Juniper Networks (Hall 2, 2D12) and Wind River (Hall 2, 2F25).

Samsung’s vRAN and Open RAN offer a 100% fully virtualized, cloud-native disaggregated vDU and vCU, proven in the large-scale commercial network deployment across the world. Its industry-leading vRAN software — vRAN 3.0 — boasts a range of smart and sustainable features optimized to satisfy the forward-looking operators’ needs to build next-generation networks. With its robust ecosystem, Samsung’s virtualized Open RAN brings advanced capabilities that improve performance and increase energy efficiency.

The Juniper Cloud-Native Router takes full advantage of container economics and operational efficiencies, giving service providers the flexibility they need to deploy 5G. The performant, software-based router delivers Juniper’s proven routing technology within the Kubernetes Container Network Interface (CNI) framework. This allows seamless integration with the Samsung vDU on the Wind River Studio platform.

Based on the open source StarlingX project, Wind River Studio provides a fully cloud-native, Kubernetes- and container-based architecture for the development, deployment, operations, and servicing of distributed edge networks at scale. It delivers a foundation to manage a geographically distributed network and simplifies day 1 and day 2 operations by providing a single-pane-of-glass, zero-touch automated solution. Studio addresses service providers’ complex challenge of deploying and managing cloud-native infrastructure for core-to-edge distributed cloud networks to provide traditional RAN performance in a vRAN/Open RAN deployment.

About Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks believes that connectivity is not the same as experiencing a great connection. Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform is built from the ground up across the AIOps layer and our systems to fully harness the power of AI. From real-time fault isolation to proactive anomaly detection and self-driving corrective actions, it provides campus, branch, data center, and WAN operations with next-level predictability, reliability, and security. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net) or connect with Juniper on X (Twitter), LinkedIn and Facebook.

About Wind River
Wind River is a global leader in delivering software for mission-critical intelligent systems. For more than four decades, the company has been an innovator and pioneer, powering billions of devices and systems that require the highest levels of security, safety, and reliability. Wind River software and expertise are accelerating digital transformation across industries, including automotive, aerospace, defense, industrial, medical, and telecommunications. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio supported by world-class global professional services and support and a broad partner ecosystem. To learn more, visit Wind River at www.windriver.com.

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.

Conducted in Samsung’s R&D lab in Korea, the first call was completed using Samsung’s versatile, O-RAN-compliant, virtualized RAN (vRAN) software, powered by AMD EPYC 8004 Series processors on Supermicro’s Telco/Edge servers, supported by Wind River Studio Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform. This demonstration aimed to verify optimized performance, energy efficiency and interoperability among partners’ solutions.

The joint demonstration represents Samsung and Vodafone’s ongoing commitment to reinforce their position in the Open RAN market and expand their ecosystem with industry-leading partners. This broader and growing Open RAN ecosystem helps operators to build and modernize mobile networks with greater flexibility, faster time-to-market (TTM), and unmatched performance.

“Open RAN represents the forthcoming major transformation in advancing mobile networks for the future. Reaching this milestone with top industry partners like Samsung and AMD shows Vodafone’s dedication to delivering on the promise of Open RAN innovation,” said Nadia Benabdallah, Network Strategy and Engineering Director at Vodafone Group. “Vodafone is continually looking to innovate its network by exploring the potential and diversity of the ecosystem.”

“This collective effort marks a key milestone for the mobile network industry to steer Open RAN forward, by embracing multiple providers at every layer of the network stack. The demo illustrates Samsung’s commitment to delivering the full potential of mobile networks by embracing openness,” said June Moon, Executive Vice President & Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung is constantly working with other technology frontrunners to offer operators the means to transform their networks and capitalize on the diversity of the Open RAN ecosystem.”

“The telco industry continues to demand new levels of performance and energy efficiency with increasingly complex workloads and stringent efficiency targets,” said Kumaran Siva, corporate vice president, Strategic Market Development, AMD. “AMD EPYC 8004 Series CPUs are optimized for modern edge and vRAN deployment models to enable the telco industry’s current evolution toward truly end-to-end open, virtualized networks. We are extremely proud of our collaboration with Samsung and Vodafone, leveraging our latest data center processors to modernize legacy telco infrastructure and deliver the leadership Open RAN performance, efficiency and scalability needed to build highly innovative mobile networks.”

“As the telecom industry continues to rapidly evolve, Samsung and its ecosystem partners are at the forefront of innovation and transformation,” said Prakash Sangam, Founder & Principal of Tantra Analyst. “This technical achievement between Samsung, Vodafone and AMD validates the enhanced capabilities among all three companies’ solutions and supports new vendors in the evolving Open RAN ecosystem.”

The companies will demonstrate its test result exceeding 1Gbps throughput for multi UE on multi-cell configuration at MWC 2024.

In June 2021, Samsung became a strategic partner for Vodafone to carry out its Open RAN vision to modernize legacy networks and grow a strong Open RAN ecosystem. Since then, the companies have been expanding their collaboration, recently marking a milestone of kicking off the largest Open RAN rollout in the U.K. in August 2023. Samsung announced a new collaboration with AMD as well to advance 5G vRAN and virtualized Open RAN for network transformation.

Samsung’s strong ecosystem illustrates its leadership in offering vRAN and Open RAN solutions that are reliable and sustainable, exceeding telco-grade performance. With the goal of pre-testing and integrating, Samsung has sought to validate its vRAN and Open RAN solutions, to offer network operators an efficient path to market. Samsung has proven its extensive expertise in commercial networks for Tier 1 operators in 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, 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.

▲ From left, Junehee Lee (Samsung Electronics), June Moon (Samsung Electronics), Nadia Benabdallah (Vodafone Group), Yago Tenorio (Vodafone Group), Alberto Ripepi (Vodafone Group), Woojune Kim (Samsung Electronics)

Samsung Electronics and O₂ Telefónica today announced that the companies will test advanced cloud-native vRAN (“virtualized Radio Access Network”) and Open RAN technologies in Germany. The two technologies enable network operators to set up even more flexible network architectures in which hardware and software are separated from each other and individual components are virtualized. The companies agreed to plan out a roadmap consisting of several tests in both lab and field.

O₂ Telefónica and Samsung will begin conducting initial tests of 4G and 5G vRAN and Open RAN technologies in a lab located at Munich, Germany. The companies will then carry out field tests in a commercial 5G network in Landsberg am Lech, with the goal to achieve technical and operational readiness. O₂ Telefónica, one of the leading mobile telecommunications providers in Germany, is transforming its network architecture towards one of the most efficient and future-proof networks built on modern RAN technologies, open interfaces and automation features.

“We believe cloud-native and autonomous architecture is a central pillar of network transformation to accelerate the adoption of innovative services, and O₂ Telefónica is working with the best players in the field,” said Mallik Rao, Chief Technology & Information Officer at O₂ Telefónica in Germany. “We are delighted to team up with Samsung as one of the first telecommunications providers in the European Union to test new networking solutions. We look forward to delivering the best-in-class connectivity to bring a host of new benefits to customers in the future.”

“Samsung is leading the charge in advancing vRAN and Open RAN with its proven expertise in large-scale commercial networks across multiple continents,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “This collaboration with O₂ Telefónica in Germany represents Samsung’s ongoing commitment to forging new pathways in vRAN and Open RAN, bringing the next-generation networks one step closer.”

The vRAN solution aims to support O₂ Telefónica’s way to have more computation in an elastic cloud environment, which will have positive impacts on automation, availability, deployment speed and flexible capacity steering. It also supports low latency use cases like VR/AR as well as high availability use cases in the business segment.

Open RAN disaggregation will enable more flexibility and automation in the RAN environment, as it offers open interfaces with more possibilities to develop new use cases for customers and network operation. It also provides the opportunity to integrate multiple components from different suppliers in one network.

For this collaboration, Samsung will provide its market leading 4G and 5G vRAN software and Open RAN-compliant radios supporting low- and mid-bands, including 3.5 GHz Massive MIMO radios. Samsung’s vRAN solution offers greater flexibility and outstanding performance, backed by its proven commercial track record. Leveraging the advantages of fully disaggregated and software-based architecture, Samsung’s vRAN solution also features enhanced capabilities for intelligent automation and energy savings, which help operators build more efficient and sustainable networks.

As multi-vendor integration is essential in building a robust vRAN and Open RAN ecosystem, industry-leading players — Dell Technologies (Dell PowerEdge servers), Intel (Xeon ® Scalable Processor) and Wind River (Cloud Platform) will also join this commercial pilot delivering best-in-class solutions.

Throughout the trial, the companies will also test intelligent network automation solutions to control life cycle management — from deployment and operation to maintenance — with just a simple click. Leveraging Samsung’s Service Management and Orchestration (SMO), which is an Open RAN-compliant solution, mobile operators can accelerate innovative software-based network rollouts by enabling automated deployment of thousands of network sites simultaneously.

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.

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 44 million mobile lines (incl. M2M — as of December 31, 2022). 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. Telefónica Deutschland Holding AG is listed on the TecDAX and MDax. In fiscal year 2022, the company generated revenues of EUR 8.2 billion with around 7,250 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. 

“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.

For this installation, Samsung is providing its vRAN software supporting Multi-RAT (multiple radio access technology) — across 4G and 5G — and its O-RAN compliant radios in the low- and mid-bands, including its Massive MIMO radios. Samsung has fully integrated its 64T64R Massive MIMO radios into Open RAN, demonstrating its capability to handle integration, which is more complex for 64T64R Massive MIMO radios, in comparison to single-band radios.

This deployment — the largest Open RAN rollout in the U.K. — is the latest milestone in the expanded collaboration between Vodafone, Samsung and several other partners, since the U.K.’s first 5G Open RAN site in Bath in January of 2022. Subsequently Samsung supported the installation of Open RAN in Vodafone’s Exmouth and Torquay network, in December of 2022. This was another first for the Open RAN ecosystem.

Using Samsung’s vRAN solutions, Vodafone, Samsung and other partners have proven the capability of Open RAN in Vodafone UK’s commercial network, exceeding the performance of legacy hardware-based RAN in urban locations. Test results exceeded the targeted KPIs, including 4G and 5G downlink and uplink throughput.

“Vodafone has been at the forefront of Open RAN innovation and we are excited to kick-off the mass installation of Open RAN, working together with Samsung Networks and the rest of our ecosystem,” said Andrea Dona, Chief Network Officer, Vodafone UK. “After rounds of testing and validation, we are well prepared to embark on this new phase in our Open RAN expansion, and look forward to opening up a new world of possibilities that will transform customer experiences.”

“Now we are witnessing how innovative technologies like Open RAN and vRAN can further bolster 5G capabilities, creating new paths and possibilities for network evolution,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Following this historic milestone in Europe, we will continue working together with Vodafone to take their Open RAN networks to new heights.”

“The release of vRAN 3.0 comes at a good time, as Samsung is extending its vRAN solutions to this major ‘brownfield’ opportunity,” said Joe Madden, Founder & Chief Analyst, Mobile Experts. “This milestone is important because it represents Open RAN replacing legacy solutions at scale in a high-capacity environment, and it sets up Vodafone UK with the flexibility to monetize their RAN better in the future.”

Samsung also supported the automation of vRAN deployments process, easing the management of cell sites from a unified platform.

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.

As part of this expanded collaboration, Samsung will integrate its vRAN 3.0 software with 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost to deliver advanced vRAN solutions. Offering increased capacity, Samsung’s enhanced vRAN will be able to support more cells with the same number of servers, which would bring the benefits of power savings and cost efficiency to network operators.

Samsung and Intel have been collaborating on vRAN innovation since 2017, and the companies have already proven the performance of their integrated solutions in Tier One operators’ commercial networks in the U.S., the U.K. and Japan. In these networks, Samsung’s vRAN software integrated with 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Intel’s previous generation processor) has been delivering performance optimization and power saving capabilities to operator networks.

Along with its ecosystem partners, Samsung continues to deliver advanced virtualized network solutions powered by its latest vRAN 3.0 capabilities, such as 200MHz 3-Cell support for 64T64R Massive MIMO radios, power saving features and improved automation. This paves the way for operators to deploy an exceptional and versatile RAN solution. In addition to its enhanced features, Samsung’s vRAN also supports multiple radio access technology (Multi-RAT) – across 2G, 4G and 5G – for greater flexibility in network operation.

“Intel has been a close innovation partner within Samsung’s 5G vRAN ecosystem, helping advance our goal of working with industry-leading innovators to develop and commercialize best-in-class vRAN solutions that meet the highest standards,” said Jeongho Park, Vice President and Head of Technology Strategy Group, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “We are excited to expand upon our collaboration with technology leaders like Intel to bring forth the next wave of vRAN enhancements – including reduced power consumption, automation and increased flexibility. This enables customers to benefit from a host of performance- and efficiency-enhancing vRAN capabilities, delivering one of the most powerful RAN solutions in the world.”

The combination of Samsung’s vRAN 3.0 and 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost will provide operators with a solution that allows them to meet their demanding capacity, coverage, quality and total cost of ownership requirements while underpinning their networks on a modern, fully virtualized architecture.

“The mobile industry is on a transformational journey toward end-to-end network virtualization,” said Cristina Rodriguez, Vice President and General Manager, Wireless Access Networking Division at Intel. “Intel and Samsung have a long-standing collaboration with a shared commitment to deliver highly integrated, virtualized RAN solutions. This new agreement will deepen that collaboration, enabling both companies to jointly speed-up operators’ vRAN deployments at scale and to deliver a strong combination of flexibility, performance and power efficiency.”

The companies have successfully completed interoperability tests, accomplishing a first call on Samsung’s vRAN running on the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost. This enhanced vRAN offering is expected to be commercially available in the second half of 2023.

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 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.

This builds upon the two companies’ initial network collaboration, including Vodafone UK’s successful launch of the first 5G Open RAN site in Bath, U.K. in January 2022, using Samsung’s virtualized RAN (vRAN) solution. Vodafone and Samsung are proving stable performance and capacity in Vodafone UK’s commercial network, exceeding targeted performance level and power savings in its strategic Open RAN sites (also known as its ‘Golden Cluster’), located in Exmouth and Torquay, England.

“As we grow and scale our network, we are excited to jointly drive collaborative Open RAN innovation and continue our groundbreaking work together with Samsung,” said Santiago Tenorio, Director of Network Architecture for Vodafone. “We look forward to continue bringing fundamental improvements to our wide-scale next-generation network, to further accelerate our open network approach for 5G expansion across Europe.”

New Europe 5G Initiatives

Building on their collaborative advancements, the two companies continue to grow their Open RAN footprint in Europe. New developments and projects include:

• In the U.K.: The companies implemented Samsung’s O-RAN compliant Massive MIMO radios in Vodafone UK’s commercial network, efficiently expanding 5G coverage in the U.K. With this, Samsung’s 64T64R Massive MIMO radios are now successfully integrated with 5G vRAN, carrying commercial data traffic. Recently, the companies also completed a data call using Samsung’s vRAN and NEC’s Massive MIMO radio, demonstrating multi-vendor interoperability for Vodafone’s commercial network. This illustrates how Open RAN technology can enable multi-vendor integration of vRAN, not only with single-band radios but also with more complex Massive MIMO radios.
• In Germany: Vodafone will carry out comprehensive pilot projects for Open RAN using Samsung’s 2G/4G vRAN and O-RAN compliant radio solutions. In these commercial pilots announced in October 2022, Vodafone will use Samsung’s mature solutions — proven in large-scale commercial networks — to demonstrate outstanding performance, stability and reliability.
• In Spain: Samsung joined Vodafone’s testbed in Ciudad Real, which was created to benchmark mature RAN providers and compare performance across both traditional and Open RAN. Samsung will deploy its Massive MIMO radios and 4G/5G vRAN in CREATE (Ciudad Real España Advanced Testing Environment) to evaluate and verify their performance in Spain’s urban environment.

“Samsung’s virtualized Open RAN solutions are successfully running in Vodafone’s commercial network in the U.K., delivering performance on par with traditional mobile radio networks and providing Vodafone with an agile network on which to deploy new services and features,” said Thomas Riedel, Head of Samsung Networks Europe. “Vodafone has been a pioneer in the Open RAN space and they continue to break new grounds. We are excited to deepen our collaboration with Vodafone by extending our capabilities across Europe, and taking vRAN innovation to the next level.”

Continuing to claim deployment milestones, the two companies remain as strong partners in leading 5G Open vRAN innovation. Vodafone and Samsung are collaborating with other Open RAN leaders, to drive acceleration of Open RAN with wider diversity and multi-vendor, open architecture.

Network slicing enables multiple virtual networks to be created within a single physical network infrastructure, where each slice is dedicated for a specific application or service — serving different purposes. For instance, operators can create a low latency slice for automated vehicles, an IoT slice for smart factories and a high bandwidth slice for live video streaming — all within the same network. This means that a single network can support a broad mix of use cases simultaneously, accelerating the delivery of new services and meeting the tailored demands of various enterprises and consumers.

“Network slicing will help us activate a wide range of services that require high performance and low latency, benefitting both consumers and businesses,” said Toshikazu Yokai, Managing Executive Officer, General Manager of Mobile Network Technical Development Division at KDDI. “Working with Samsung, we continue to deliver the most innovative technologies to enhance customer experiences.”

Through this field trial conducted in Q4 of 2022, KDDI and Samsung proved their capabilities of SLA assurance to generate multiple network slices that meet SLA requirements, guaranteeing specific performance parameters — such as low latency and high throughput — for each application. Samsung also proved the technical feasibility of multiple user equipment (UE)-based network slices with quality assurance using the RIC, which performs advanced control of RAN as defined by the O-RAN Alliance.

“Network slicing will open up countless opportunities, by allowing KDDI to offer tailor-made, high-performance connectivity, along with new capabilities and services, to its customers,” Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “This demonstration is another meaningful step forward in our efforts to advance technological innovation and enrich network services. We’re excited to have accomplished this together with KDDI and look forward to continued collaboration.”

For more than a decade, the two companies have been working together, hitting major 5G networks milestones that include: KDDI’s selection of Samsung as a 5G network solutions provider, end-to-end 5G network slicing demonstration in the lab, 5G network rollout on 700MHz and the deployment of 5G vRAN on KDDI’s commercial network.

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’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)

The CTO’s Choice Award is selected by a panel of industry experts comprised of 21 CTOs from leading mobile network operators around the globe. Chosen among the six winners in the Best Mobile Technology category — recognizing distinguished leaders in networks and technology — this is the highest recognition at the prestigious industry awards and a top honor in the global telco industry.

“We are honored that Samsung Networks’ fully-virtualized 5G RAN was recognized as the supreme champion with the CTO’s Choice Award, representing our dedicated efforts in network advancement,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung believes vRAN is a powerful enabler for network transformation and will pave the path towards next-generation networks. As a global leader in virtualization with successful commercialization experiences, we continue to lead the journey, redefining what is possible for 5G network innovation.”

“In one of the most fiercely contested categories in the GLOMOs, the judges felt that the Samsung entry showed innovation in one of the most exciting parts of the market,” said Shaun Collins, Chair of the Judges, GLOMO Awards (Executive Chairman, CCS Insight). “It was clear the 21 carrier CTOs also thought that and selected Samsung’s entry for the prestigious CTO Choice Award this year.”

This award is backed by Samsung’s commercial track record of vRAN deployments in wide-scale in North America, Europe and Asia. Samsung delivered its 5G vRAN solutions for a large-scale commercial network service in the United States that launched in December 2020, providing reliable mobile services to millions of users. The company was also the world’s first in commercializing 5G 64T64R Massive MIMO radios on 5G vRAN using C-band spectrum (3.5GHz).

With a fully disaggregated architecture, Samsung’s vRAN runs on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers, offering features and performance that are equivalent to traditional hardware-based equipment. The company’s vRAN brings reliability, scalability and flexibility to mobile operators’ networks.

For detailed information on Samsung’s vRAN and Open RAN leadership, please refer to the recent announcement.

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 fully 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 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

In June 2021, the companies announced that Vodafone UK selected Samsung as a leading vendor to support a wide-scale 5G commercial deployment based on an Open RAN architecture powered by vRAN in Europe.

“Open RAN can radically evolve the telecoms industry, and we are excited to champion the technology in the UK,” said Andrea Dona, Chief Network Officer, Vodafone UK. “This is an ecosystem which is only a few years old but the progress we have made so far is quite remarkable. Not only have we begun the first scaled deployment in the UK, but we have also installed the first 5G Open RAN site. Open RAN is now a real-world technology and it is truly exciting to see this technology flourish.”

“Samsung is proud to collaborate with Vodafone UK to switch on the UK’s first 5G Open RAN site,” said Thomas Riedel, Head of Samsung Networks Europe at Samsung Electronics. “This will help deliver the benefits of our carrier-grade 5G vRAN solutions to millions of Vodafone UK customers. Through our accumulated commercial 5G vRAN experience with leading operators across major markets globally, we look forward to pushing the boundaries of technological innovation and supporting the 5G journey across Europe.”

In the coming months, Vodafone and Samsung will be testing Samsung vRAN’s telco-grade performance metrics and features, such as security, inter-Radio Access Technology (inter-RAT) mobility and inter-frequency handover, as well as ensuring compliance with Open RAN specifications. Samsung’s fully virtualized, software-based RAN runs on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers, offering features and performance that are equivalent to traditional hardware-based equipment. Using a cloud-native and container-based architecture, the company’s vRAN enables more flexible deployments and network management efficiencies for mobile operators, while helping them meet the demands of deploying new and existing services.

The companies will also test other advanced network technologies that leverage both LTE and 5G technologies to help enhance mobile user experiences. This includes Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), which assigns time-frequency resources based on traffic demands to accommodate users of both LTE and 5G in the same frequency band, and E-UTRAN New Radio Dual Connectivity (EN-DC), which boosts 5G speeds, reliability and coverage by combining the resources of 4G and 5G networks. Testing will occur in the first half of 2022.

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 fully 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.

As one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators, Orange provides mobile services to 222 million users in 26 countries including Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The group plans to deploy O-RAN Alliance-compliant base stations starting with indoor and rural configurations and expand to new deployments in the coming years.

“Open RAN is a major evolution of radio access that requires deeper cooperation within the industry. With our European peers, we want to accelerate the development of Open RAN solutions that meet our needs. After the publication of common specifications, Orange’s Open RAN Integration Center will support the development and tuning of solutions from a broad variety of actors,” said Arnaud Vamparys, Senior Vice President of Radio Access Networks and Microwaves at Orange.

Samsung’s vRAN solutions can help ensure more network flexibility, greater scalability and resource efficiency for network operation by replacing dedicated baseband hardware with software elements. Additionally, Samsung’s vRAN supports both low and mid-band spectrums, as well as indoor and outdoor solutions. Samsung is the only major network vendor that has conducted vRAN commercial deployments with Tier one operators in North America, Europe and Asia.

“We are pleased to participate in Orange’s innovative laboratory,” said Woojune Kim, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Through this collaboration, we look forward to taking networks to new heights in the European market, enabling operators to offer more immersive mobile services to their users.”

By opening its Open RAN Integration Center in Châtillon, near Paris, Orange will enable the testing and deployment of networks capable of operating with innovative technologies, which will serve as the backbone of the operator’s future networks. At the center, Samsung and Orange will conduct trials to verify capabilities and performance of Samsung’s vRAN, radio and Massive MIMO radio.

Samsung has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end infrastructure 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 fully 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 and Ciena will collaborate to offer hardware and software solutions to telecom operators, enabling them to support the increasing volume of 5G data traffic at the edge and within an increasingly distributed 5G architecture.

“As 5G proliferates, immersive services like AR/VR and HD video streaming are becoming the center of our daily mobile lives. In order to deliver more powerful 5G services, the current network architecture needs to evolve,” said Wonil Roh, Senior Vice President and Head of Product Strategy, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung’s ability to couple our best-in-class 5G solutions with a leader in transport technologies like Ciena will give customers a solution to address this need, and do so with the confidence to scale and evolve their networks to support the future of 5G.”

Combining Samsung’s 5G RAN and Core with Ciena’s xHaul Routing and Switching portfolio and next-generation Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller will give customers an optimized offer that takes full advantage of 5G services, while providing efficient ways to manage massive data across networks and to the cloud. This will help accelerate the deployment of advanced applications enhanced by 5G, such as network slicing, IoT and automation through AI. The combined offer will deliver a validated solution, providing more compatible, faster and simplified implementations of 5G networks.

“Together with Samsung, we’re fueling the next generation of mobile connectivity to unleash the full potential of 5G,” said Matt Cook, Vice President, Global Partner Organization, Ciena. “As both companies are leading innovators in our respective spaces with strong customer bases for these portfolios, this powerful collaboration leverages our collective leadership to create best-in-breed 5G networks that are open, scalable and adaptive.”

The combined offer will comprise an end-to-end solution set including Ciena’s xHaul Routing and Switching portfolio and next-generation MCP domain controller, and Samsung’s Core and RAN portfolio, including virtualized RAN (vRAN) solutions, baseband units and radios. The resulting solution set is available immediately.

Samsung has pioneered a successful delivery of 5G solutions which include chipsets, radios and core. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung drives the industry to advance 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio from fully 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.

Ciena is an industry leader in coherent optical, routing and switching and analytics-driven automation. The company’s innovations underpin many of the world’s largest mobile backhaul networks, including the world’s largest mobile network operators.

About Ciena

Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) is a networking systems, services and software company. We provide solutions that help our clients create the Adaptive Network in response to the constantly changing demands of their users. By delivering best-in-class networking technology through high-touch consultative relationships, we build the world’s most agile networks with automation, openness and scale. For updates on Ciena, follow us on Twitter @Ciena, LinkedIn, the Ciena Insights blog, or visit www.ciena.com.

Powered by Samsung’s vRAN, KDDI’s 5G network will deliver exceptional performance, enabling KDDI users to experience the full potential of 5G.

“We are delighted to extend our collaboration with Samsung and to become the first operator in Japan to use their 5G vRAN solutions, which are currently delivering superior performance in commercial networks,” said Kazuyuki Yoshimura, Chief Technology Officer of KDDI. “We believe in the power of virtualization, and this collaboration serves as a meaningful catalyst for driving the next phase of 5G innovation, and advancing our networks to offer best-in-class 5G services.”

With its latest 5G vRAN technology, Samsung brings a range of improvements to KDDI’s network. By replacing dedicated baseband hardware with software elements, vRAN offers more deployment flexibility, greater scalability and improved resource efficiency in network operation. With its cloud-native, container-based architecture, Samsung’s vRAN also simplifies end-to-end network management through automation, allowing operators to quickly introduce new services with minimal impact on deployment.

“With commercially-proven performance and reliability, our vRAN is an attractive technology option for operators — from both the deployment and operational perspectives,” said Woojune Kim, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “We are excited to mark another milestone with KDDI, following previous network collaborations that include the commercialization of 5G in 2020, and the rollout of 700MHz 5G in 2021. We look forward to our ongoing work with KDDI to bring new 5G innovations to their customers.”

Virtualized networks will play a key role in supporting KDDI’s pursuit of new 5G use cases and next-generation capabilities. Last year, for instance, Samsung and KDDI demonstrated how 5G end-to-end network slicing could play a key role for mobile operators by enabling the creation of multiple virtual networks within a single physical network infrastructure.

Samsung and KDDI will begin trials in Q1 of 2022, and start commercial deployment in the second half of 2022.

Leading vRAN Innovation

Samsung has been at the forefront of vRAN leadership around the world, unveiling its fully virtualized 5G RAN in 2020, followed by successful commercialization with a Tier 1 operator in the U.S. In June 2021, the company was selected by a major European operator to bring vRAN to the U.K.

Samsung recently demonstrated its vRAN capability to support Massive MIMO radios on mid-band, reaching multi-gigabit speeds. The company also teamed with a Tier 1 U.S. operator to complete an end-to-end 5G vRAN trial over C-Band in a live network environment, demonstrating vRAN performance equal to that of traditional hardware-based equipment.

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 fully 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.

Next-Level Capabilities With a Wide Range of Support

Leading global operators choose Samsung’s vRAN for its ensured quality, credibility and robustness, delivering performance similar to that of traditional hardware-based equipment. The company’s vRAN is primed to support mobile operators and enterprises with its ability to cover a wide range of spectrums—from low-band to mid-band—as well as its flexibility in terms of supporting solutions for both outdoor and indoor environments.

“Using the company’s own independently developed end-to-end vRAN software stack, Samsung’s solution boosts network performance and brings agility to the network. This in-house technology is the key feature of Samsung’s vRAN that distinguishes our solution from others in the industry,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “As a global leader in vRAN technology, we will continue to strengthen our vRAN capabilities, while aiming to maintain strong leadership in virtualized networks and redefining what is possible for 5G networks.”

Technological innovation has been key to Samsung’s leading advancement of virtualized solutions. The evolution of the company’s vRAN solution can be broken down into three different phases, which are outlined below.

□ First-Generation Virtualized RAN – The Virtualized Central Unit (vCU), Commercialized in 2019

Samsung successfully developed its vCU in 2016 to initiate virtualization in mobile networks. The vCU addresses upper layer processing functions in the RAN. It is generally installed in a centralized location of an operator’s network to reduce the number of anchor point handovers, improving network quality and reliability.

The company carried out multiple trials in Korea, Japan and the U.S. using its vCU and in 2019, successfully deployed this solution for the world’s first 5G commercial networks in Korea and the U.S.

□ Second-Generation Virtualized RAN – The Virtualized Distributed Unit (vDU), Commercialized in 2020

Harnessing its decades of experience and long-standing leadership in RAN technology, Samsung developed a vDU using its independently developed software stack to deliver outstanding performance.

The vDU is responsible for real-time processing functions, and can either reside with the vCU, or on-site with the radio. By allowing the vCU and vDU to be placed in different locations, vRAN offers cost-effective deployment and operation that meets a range of speed, latency, throughput and quality requirements.

In 2020, Samsung introduced its fully virtualized end-to-end 5G RAN solution, comprised of a vDU and vCU, which was later rolled out in collaboration with a leading U.S. operator. The solution’s launch made it the first technology of its kind to achieve wide-scale commercialization. Shortly after that, Samsung expanded its vRAN capability to become the first in the industry to provide support for the Massive MIMO radios on mid-band, demonstrating top 5G vRAN speeds. In this trial, Samsung’s vRAN achieved commercial network performance that was on par with traditional hardware-based equipment.

□ Next-Generation Virtualized RAN With Enhanced Capabilities – Increased Capacity With Hardware Accelerators, To Be Commercialized in 2022

This year, Samsung has taken vRAN to the next level with its own software stack along with a hardware accelerator, which further increases the capacity of its vRAN to support more cells. The hardware accelerator is a dedicated device that works with the CPU in COTS server to improve processing capacity.

Recently, Samsung completed the industry’s first vRAN data session over C-Band spectrum in a live network, leveraging its software-based vRAN running on COTS servers with the hardware accelerator. In this trial, which was conducted with a prominent U.S. operator, Samsung achieved speeds close to the theoretical peak.

Samsung’s journey to highly capable vRAN has been a long and challenging one. But now, with the company having delivered vRAN with C-band Massive MIMO support and having conducted a successful live network trial in the U.S., the future of vRAN looks bright.

“We have been driving the industry to large scale virtualization using the advanced architecture we have built into our network from the core to the far edge. This recent accomplishment paves the way for a more programmable, efficient, and scalable 5G network,” said Adam Koeppe, Senior Vice President of Technology Planning at Verizon. “Customers deserve more than mere access to 5G. They deserve 5G built with the highest, gold-standard engineering practices that have positioned Verizon as the most reliable industry leader for years.”

Why Virtualization Is Important for 5G Performance Optimization

The trials, conducted over Verizon’s network (using C-band Special Temporary Authority granted to Verizon by the FCC) in Texas, Connecticut and Massachusetts, used Samsung’s fully virtualized RAN (vRAN) solution built on its own software stack and C-band 64T64R Massive MIMO radio in coordination with Verizon’s virtualized core. The trials achieved speeds commensurate with traditional hardware-based equipment.

Virtualization is critical to delivering the services promised by advanced 5G networks. Key 5G use cases such as massive scale IOT solutions, more robust consumer devices and solutions, AR/VR, remote healthcare, autonomous robotics in manufacturing environments, and ubiquitous smart city solutions, will heavily rely on the programmability of virtualized networks.

Cloud native virtualized architecture leads to greater flexibility, faster delivery of services, greater scalability, and improved cost efficiency in networks, paving the way for wide-scale mobile edge computing and network slicing. This technology enables Verizon to rapidly respond to customers’ varied latency and computing needs. Virtualization will also lower the barrier to entry for new vendors in the ecosystem. New entrants will accelerate innovation, reduce operating costs, and lay the groundwork for flexible network and cloud infrastructure closer to the customer, eventually leading to single digit millisecond latency.

“We’re proud to mark another milestone following our first large-scale commercial 5G vRAN deployment for Verizon, which is currently servicing millions of users. This trial reinforces our commitment to helping operators evolve their advanced 5G networks,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “This achievement represents our dedicated efforts in leading the transition to virtualization, and helping Verizon realize greater efficiency, scalability and flexibility. vRAN is a powerful enabler for network transformation, and we aim to continue leading this journey.”

Why Massive MIMO Is Important for 5G Performance Optimization

Massive MIMO is an evolution in antenna arrays that uses a high number of transmitters which enables more possible signal paths between a device and a cell tower. It also reduces interference through beamforming, which directs the beam from the cell site directly to where the customer is resulting in higher and more consistent speeds for customers using apps and uploading and downloading files. This trial used Samsung’s C-band 64T64R Massive MIMO radios that support digital/dynamic beamforming, SU-MIMO, MU-MIMO and dual connectivity and carrier aggregation.

“Incorporating full, cloud-native virtualization, Massive MIMO and beamforming into our network design and deployment will result in so much more than our customers merely seeing a 5G icon on their devices. This is 5G service optimized for peak performance,” said Koeppe.

Today’s milestone follows Samsung’s recent announcement on expanding its vRAN capability to support mid-band Massive MIMO radios—a first for the industry. Samsung’s C-band Massive MIMO radio is part of a complete C-band solutions portfolio.

Verizon on Track To Deliver 5G Over C-band

This virtualization work comes on the heels of other work to speed the expansion of 5G Ultra Wideband service using C-band spectrum including:

• successful trials integrating C-band with mmWave licensed spectrum,
• securing new agreements with Verizon’s tower partners, which provide for process improvements including standardizing and reducing forms and minimizing legal reviews, and…
• installation of C-band equipment.

These combined efforts, along with ongoing lab and field trials to optimize 5G technology on C-band spectrum will allow Verizon to offer expanded mobility and broadband services to millions more consumers and businesses as soon as the spectrum is cleared.

In the first quarter of 2022, Verizon expects to put into service the new 5G C-band spectrum in the initial 46 markets and to provide 5G Ultra Wideband service to 100 million people. Over 2022 and 2023, coverage is expected to increase to more than 175 million people and by 2024 and beyond, when the remaining C-band spectrum is cleared, more than 250 million people are expected to have access to Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband service on C-band spectrum.

About Verizon Communications Inc.
Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ) was formed on June 30, 2000 and is one of the world’s leading providers of technology, communications, information and entertainment products and services. Headquartered in New York City and with a presence around the world, Verizon generated revenues of $128.3 billion in 2020. The company offers data, video and voice services and solutions on its award-winning networks and platforms, delivering on customers’ demand for mobility, reliable network connectivity, security and control.

The announcement follows the launch of Samsung’s Networks Business in Australia in April 2021, and since then, the company has been exploring the delivery of Samsung’s leading 5G mmWave technologies to the nation.

TPG Telecom, a leading mobile network operator in Australia, operates a number of leading mobile and internet brands in Australia including Vodafone. Recently, TPG Telecom announced its investment of AU$108 million to acquire spectrum in all available license areas in the 26GHz band – tripling its total spectrum holdings. With abundant mmWave spectrum, TPG Telecom will be able to offer high speed data services and immersive use cases for its mobile and home users. TPG Telecom’s extensive fiber assets combined with a network of small cells will enable the deployment of vRAN architecture.

For the trial, Samsung will provide its Compact Macro and vRAN solution. Samsung’s latest 5G Compact Macro brings together a baseband, radio and antenna in a single form-factor. This compact and lightweight solution can be easily installed on the sides of buildings, as well as on utility poles, for the swift build-out of 5G networks. Samsung’s industry-leading commercial vRAN solution is built on the company’s independently developed stack, and runs on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) servers. As a leader in vRAN, Samsung has commercially deployed its vRAN solution in wide scale for global Tier 1 operators’ networks in markets outside of Australia, and recently expanded its capability to support 3.5GHz Massive MIMO radio, which many industry voices had said would be hard to support with vRAN. Moreover, Samsung’s 5G vRAN on mmWave, already commercially deployed in global markets, including Korea, Japan and the U.S, has the capacity to support multi-gigabit speeds, delivering IT technology efficiencies and deployment advantages, while offering transformational 5G mobile experiences.

“We are very pleased to partner with Samsung as part of our new Innovation Lab to drive product and technology innovation by trialing virtualization,” said Iñaki Berroeta, CEO at TPG Telecom. “Deploying mmWave spectrum on our 5G network together with vRAN architecture will allow us to develop exciting 5G use cases for industry verticals and enable the delivery of even faster speeds and greater capacity for our customers.”

“Samsung is excited to begin this trial with TPG Telecom powered by our innovative 5G vRAN solution and latest integrated 26GHz mmWave product, which will be the first in Australia,” said Woojune Kim, Executive Vice President and Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Through a combination of our powerful 5G solutions and ongoing efforts in 5G development, Samsung looks forward to helping TPG Telecom gain the full benefits of 5G to reshape the value of mobile experiences for users and enterprises.”

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 fully 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 TPG Telecom
TPG Telecom (ASX:TPG) is an Australian telecommunications company which is home to some of Australia’s most-loved brands including Vodafone, TPG, iiNet, AAPT, Internode, Lebara and felix.

TPG Telecom owns and operates nationwide mobile and fixed networks that are connecting Australia for the better. These include Australia’s second-largest fixed voice and data network, with more than 27,000 kilometres of metropolitan and inter-capital fibre networks and a leading mobile network comprising more than 5,600 sites and covering over 23 million Australians.

As the second largest telecommunications company listed on the ASX, TPG Telecom has a strong challenger spirit and a commitment to delivering the best services and products to our customers.

For more information, visit https://www.tpgtelecom.com.au/

The demonstration leveraged E-UTRAN New Radio Dual Connectivity (EN-DC) technology combining 40MHz of 4G frequency and 100MHz of 5G frequency on the C-Band spectrum. Through the dual connectivity approach, Samsung achieved 2.25Gbps overall on a single user device. For the demonstration, Samsung used its latest virtualized RAN, C-Band 64T64R Massive MIMO radio, and cloud-native 5G Core. Samsung’s vRAN, which is already in use providing services on low-band spectrum in the U.S., proved its capability to support Massive MIMO radios through this achievement.

“By combining our true vRAN solution and powerful C-Band 64T64R Massive MIMO radio for the first time in the industry, Samsung achieved a significant breakthrough, increasing the throughput ten-fold, improving user experience and showing our leadership in virtualized technology,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “This milestone is a result of Samsung’s ongoing efforts in 5G innovation, backed by global commercialization experience, and we aim to continue driving R&D efforts to help mobile operators deliver pioneering solutions.”

Samsung’s vRAN solution enables mobile operators to bring greater flexibility, scalability, and resource efficiency in network management with various spectrums in Time Division Duplex(TDD) and Frequency Division Duplex(FDD). Today’s solution is significant as it demonstrates how the company’s vRAN delivers performance parity with traditional hardware-based equipment, while covering spectrum from low-band to mid-band, and supporting both outdoor and indoor radio solutions for both carrier and private networks.

“Operators consistently tell us that RAN virtualization is a priority as they look to accelerate their 5G network and service deployments,” said Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence. “Samsung’s latest demonstrations will be well-received, signaling that 5G vRAN is a viable option, achieving performance on par with purpose-built hardware.”

Samsung recently announced its complete C-Band solutions portfolio, including macro and micro radios, indoor solutions, network optimization tools as well as C-Band Massive MIMO radio which has already been commercially shipped to the U.S. The company’s 5G vRAN solution was rolled out last year, delivering the industry’s first wide-scale commercialization of a fully virtualized 5G network solution.

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 fully 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’s 5G vRAN consists of a virtualized Central Unit (vCU), a virtualized Distributed Unit (vDU), and a wide range of radio units to enable a smooth migration to 5G. By replacing the dedicated baseband hardware used in a traditional RAN architecture with software elements on a general-purpose computing platform, mobile operators can scale 5G capacity and performance more easily, add new features quickly, and have flexibility to support multiple architectures.

It can also reduce maintenance costs by moving to a COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) x86-based platform, while matching the reliability of a traditional RAN. COTS x86-based servers are standard and readily available computing elements from a large supplier ecosystem. Operators use them today for a range of IT needs.

“Samsung’s 5G vRAN validates a software-based alternative to vendor-specific hardware, while offering high performance, flexibility, and stability,” said Jaeho Jeon, Executive Vice President and Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Once the solution becomes commercially available this quarter, we look forward to providing carriers with additional architectural options for building innovative and open 5G networks.”

Samsung’s 5G vCU was first commercialized in April 2019 and is currently in commercial use by mobile carriers in Japan, Korea, and the United States. This new solution adds the vDU in addition to the vCU to deliver a fully-virtualized 5G vRAN. When combined with Samsung’s virtualized 4G/5G Core, the operator will be able to implement an end-to-end software-based radio and core network running on COTS x86 servers. The company will continue to conduct vDU field trials in North America in the second half of this year.

Designed for 5G Expansion

The recent surge in broadband—especially high-quality video streaming to support work, entertainment, and learn-at-home demands—has highlighted the need for carriers to be able to quickly deploy network resources to meet the shifting requirements of businesses and consumers. Samsung’s vRAN solution, with its easy expandability and manageability, is able to support operators who want to rapidly expand their network capacity and features, and also evolve their networks with 5G-powered capabilities to support these demands.

“Now, more than ever, mobile operators recognize the need for quality-driven, flexible, scalable, and cost-efficient network architectures while planning for 5G network success,” said Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence. “RAN virtualization will be an important tool in helping to deliver on those demands and Samsung’s continuing vRAN innovation positions it well to deliver.”

Samsung’s vRAN operates on x86-based COTS servers, either with or without hardware accelerators depending on factors such as total bandwidth.

Verified Performance

Samsung demonstrated its vRAN capabilities to customers in April 2020, proving the feasibility of full virtualization by operating 5G New Radio (NR) baseband functions in software running on an x86-based COTS server.

The demonstration results had matched the performance of legacy hardware baseband.¹ It used Samsung’s field-proven cellular algorithms while testing Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), a technology that helps carriers take advantage of 5G in 4G frequency bands and advance a seamless evolution to next-generation communications.

Samsung is a pioneer in the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions ranging from chipset, radio, and core network to cloud platform for both mid-band and mmWave spectrum. The company has been supporting 5G commercial services in leading markets, including Korea, U.S., and most recently Japan, where the majority of worldwide 5G subscribers are currently located. In addition, Samsung is further expanding its global footprint rapidly to new markets from Europe to Canada and New Zealand.

¹ Based on Samsung internal testing.