The test call was made on the Intel Xeon 6 SoC optimized for vRAN software capable of supporting intensive workloads, AI applications and services across 2G, 4G and 5G networks on a single high-performance server. This streamlined configuration paves the way for Vodafone to manage fewer systems and less hardware that perform on par or better than traditional RAN baseband solutions, while reducing costs, energy consumption and providing a more flexible foundation to introduce AI throughout its network. This milestone was achieved in tandem with ecosystem partners, Dell Technologies (server) and Wind River (cloud platform) and will be commercially deployed during 2026.

The announcement builds on the selection of Samsung as a key strategic partner for Vodafone’s deployment of Open RAN at scale across Europe. Together, the companies deployed their first Open RAN test site in Germany last year and have been extending the technology to additional commercial sites. Later this year, the Hanseatic city of Wismar in the federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is set to become the first city in the Vodafone mobile network in Germany to be fully equipped with Open RAN. With network performance matching or exceeding that of traditional hardware-based solutions, Vodafone’s Open RAN deployment in Germany is on track to cover broader regions in the country in a phased approach, driven by the rapid integration of the latest processor advancements.

Samsung and Vodafone have continued to strengthen their network collaboration based on open architecture by integrating advanced processors and incorporating AI-powered automation into commercial networks. By fostering an open ecosystem, Open RAN accelerates the delivery of high-performance, energy-efficient connectivity while enabling Vodafone to rapidly introduce innovative services that seamlessly adapt to evolving customer demands.

“Vodafone is focused on delivering the best possible customer experience by building a future-ready network,” said Marco Zangani, Director of Network Strategy and Architecture, Vodafone. “The test conducted with Samsung, alongside our implementation of open network architecture, supports this strategy, enabling us to introduce new 5G-Advanced services while enhancing energy efficiency and streamlining operations through automation and AI from the cell site to the edge of the network and in the core.”

Samsung’s vRAN offers the flexibility to support the latest processing technologies as they come to market, ensuring operators remain ahead of the industry’s rapid innovation cycle. Operators can efficiently manage network resources and apply unused computing capacity to host and run AI and edge applications directly on their existing telco infrastructure, closer to where the data is generated and used. Such versatility enables seamless processing power management and enhances responsiveness, while also paving the way for next-generation customer experiences that range from emerging devices to more dynamic, latency-sensitive applications.

“This breakthrough with Vodafone shows how a software, cloud-native approach empowers networks to become more efficient, more adaptable and ready for what’s next,” said Everth Flores, Vice President and Head of Samsung Networks Europe. “By advancing toward more flexible networks, we are not only facilitating immediate AI adoption but also laying the essential groundwork for an AI-native, 6G-ready infrastructure. We are proud to continue our momentum with Vodafone, as we expand and modernize connectivity in markets across Europe.”

To efficiently manage software-driven networks at scale, Samsung and Vodafone are taking a more intelligent approach to automation, made possible by Samsung CognitiV Network Operations Suite (NOS). This AI-powered automation solution is the ideal fit for Vodafone’s large-scale Open RAN deployment and AI transformation across Europe, by enabling one-click network deployment and easier upgrades.

Samsung Networks has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions, including chipsets, radios and cores. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung is driving the industry to advance 5G networks and paving the way for 6G and beyond with its market-leading product portfolio, from purpose-built RAN, vRAN, Open RAN, AI-RAN and core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools and applications. The company currently provides innovative network solutions to mobile operators that deliver boundless connectivity to hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

1. ©Intel, the Intel logo and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. ︎

Germany is the first market implementing the solutions and will become one of the largest Open RAN deployments in Europe, with Samsung equipping thousands of sites. The first site is already live in Hannover, and Wismar is set to become the first city served by Vodafone to be fully equipped with Open RAN in early 2026. Vodafone will work with Samsung to add thousands of Open RAN sites across Europe over a five-year programme.

Over the years, Samsung has demonstrated its technological leadership by supporting Vodafone in building confidence in Open RAN technology, leading to Vodafone’s decision to initiate a large-scale deployment in Germany, the biggest operation in Vodafone’s portfolio. Following the deployment in Germany, Samsung will work with Vodafone to continue expanding Open RAN in other European markets. Through this expanded collaboration, Vodafone and Samsung are leading Open RAN momentum in the European market, underscoring the companies’ continued efforts to transforming the mobile network landscape and the mutual trust they have cultivated.

For this extensive project, Samsung will provide its versatile vRAN solution with multi-generational support across 2G, 4G and 5G. The company will also deliver O-RAN compliant radios including Massive MIMO radios, AI-powered Samsung CognitiV Network Operations Suite (NOS) and system integration services. Leveraging its software-based architecture, Samsung vRAN delivers enhanced capabilities that improve energy efficiency, optimize performance, while supporting intelligent automation to drive total cost of ownership (TCO) savings.

By harnessing its expertise in interoperability and providing system integration services, Samsung will work with industry-leading partners — Dell Technologies (servers), Intel (processors) and Wind River (cloud platform).

“Open RAN is a key pillar of our mission to build best-in-class networks and Vodafone has already proven the power of this innovative technology through our work with Samsung. The next step in our journey is to extend our Open RAN reach to more countries,” said Alberto Ripepi, Chief Network Officer at Vodafone. “By bringing in enhanced capabilities powered by AI and automation, we look forward to fostering a more advanced digital society as well as providing greater connectivity to our customers.”

“In the midst of a transformational shift in the telco industry, Samsung has been spearheading software-based and autonomous networks including vRAN and Open RAN. Leveraging our unmatched technological expertise and real-world pedigree, we are empowering our customers to have a competitive edge in evolving their networks in the AI era,” said Woojune Kim, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung is fully committed to supporting Vodafone’s vision to shape the future of networks by bringing proven, cutting-edge technologies, with a strong start in Germany.”

This collaboration holds significance beyond expanding geographical coverage. Vodafone and Samsung are advancing AI-friendly and autonomous Open RAN by utilizing software-based architecture. vRAN serves as an optimal foundation for AI, enabling operators to seamlessly integrate AI capabilities into their networks, such as AI-powered Samsung CognitiV NOS. This automation solution is a set of diverse AI applications with multi-vendor support. Spanning mobile core, radio access and transport elements, Samsung’s end-to-end network automation solution plays a crucial role in adopting and managing open, software-based networks at scale.

Samsung will offer Vodafone full observability across lifecycle management of its network from planning, deployment and operation to optimization, helping the operator deploy and manage large-scale virtualized Open RAN networks more intelligently and efficiently. AI-powered Energy Saving Manager (AI-ESM), one of the key applications of Samsung CognitiV NOS, will be deployed to significantly increase energy efficiency. It analyzes site environments and traffic patterns, then switches off cell sites during low traffic times and turns them back on when traffic increases, ultimately improving energy efficiency while ensuring network performance.

In addition, Samsung is delivering its latest radios and software capabilities that support RAN sharing. Samsung’s comprehensive portfolio of radios not only covers diverse spectrum bands but also supports wide bandwidth and high transmit power required for RAN sharing in European countries. As RAN sharing is essential in facilitating wide-scale Open RAN adoption in certain areas of the region, Samsung’s solution will help operators deliver high-performing shared networks while reducing hardware costs and lowering energy consumption.

“Through years of collaboration with Vodafone and other leading operators across North America, Europe, and Asia, Samsung has built deep technological expertise and extensive deployment experience in open and virtualized RAN,” said Rémy Pascal, Practice Leader, Mobile infrastructure at global analyst firm Omdia. “Vodafone’s decision to select Samsung further validates its market leadership in open vRAN.”

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 purpose-built RAN, vRAN, Open RAN and 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 it has been selected by Vodafone Romania to deploy its fully virtualized RAN software (vRAN) and radio solutions for the Open RAN rollout across Romania. This commercial deployment will cover major urban cities in Romania to deliver high-quality, stable commercial network services to Vodafone’s customers.

Samsung will provide its vRAN solutions supporting multi-RAT, automation solutions and Open RAN-compliant triple-band radios as well as 5G Massive MIMO radios. Samsung’s triple-band radio combines 700MHz, 800MHZ and 900MHz frequency bands into one compact radio that provides multi-spectrum coverage for 2G, 4G and 5G, enabling increased network capacity, greater flexibility and a smaller footprint.

Samsung’s software-based vRAN solution supports multiple generations of network technologies in a single platform — including 2G — which is an important spectrum for Internet of Small Things (IoST), machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and voice communications for roaming services in Europe.

“The momentum behind Open RAN technologies, in Vodafone and amongst our partners, is building,” said Alberto Ripepi, Chief Network Officer at Vodafone Group. “As new technologies like generative AI take root and are embedded within businesses, factories, and healthcare practices, they will require intelligence-based powerful networks to support them. Open RAN is designed to do just that.”

“As our collaboration with Vodafone continues to make strides across Europe, this rollout in Romania will mark a significant milestone that underscores our dedication to network innovation,” said Woojune Kim, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Our pioneering network solutions will propel Vodafone Romania’s transformation journey, providing a flexible and powerful way to realize the full potential of Open RAN. We look forward to combining our diverse experiences together to reshape the future of connectivity.”

This announcement follows Samsung’s pilot project with Vodafone last year in Romania. The companies completed the first 4G calls over shared commercial Open RAN in Romania’s rural areas. Samsung is collaborating with Vodafone to support its Open RAN initiative in both rural and urban areas of Romania, helping the operator transition to an open network architecture.

Since switching on the U.K.’s first 5G Open RAN site in 2022, Vodafone and Samsung have been validating Open RAN technology in a brownfield, urban environment, reaching KPIs that matched or exceeded legacy kit. Making continuous progress in Europe, back in August 2023, the companies announced their massive Open RAN rollout in the U.K., a key stage in Vodafone’s plan to equip 30% of all its European sites with Open RAN by 2030.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

For this collaboration, Samsung will supply its commercial vRAN solutions and O-RAN compliant radios, covering both low-band and mid-band spectrum. The company’s fully virtualized RAN is software-based and 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, Samsung’s vRAN enables more flexible deployments and efficiency in network management for mobile operators.

Among the key benefits of the revolutionary architecture is its automation capabilities, which simplify end-to-end network management. With Samsung’s vRAN, operators can quickly meet the evolving demands of new and existing services with minimal impact on deployment. Samsung will also deliver to Vodafone UK its market leading O-RAN compliant 5G radios, including the latest Massive MIMO radios.

“Vodafone is committed to leading the next wave of digital transformation across Europe, ensuring fast and reliable connectivity for all,” said Johan Wibergh, Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone. “Open RAN, built on strong partnerships, is key to realizing this ambition. Samsung’s innovative solutions and expertise are part of the foundation that is creating this network of the future.”

This collaboration with Vodafone marks a first for Samsung, as the company brings its cloud native virtualized RAN technology to a leading operator’s network in Europe. As acknowledged by many in the industry, virtualized RAN and O-RAN technologies will be important to helping evolve network architectures to power the next generation of 5G applications and services. To this end, Samsung has been continuously leading in vRAN innovation, most recently showing the capability to support the multi-gigabit speeds of Massive MIMO radios on COTS servers (Link).

“We are proud that this collaboration with Vodafone—one of the premier carriers in the world—will be the first scaled deployment of our pioneering 5G technologies in Europe, including vRAN and O-RAN,” said Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “This is a major step forward, as more operators are transitioning into new RAN technologies to prioritize user experience and efficiency. We look forward to continue leading the way in 5G innovation to meet our customer’s highest standards of performance, functionality and reliability.”

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

Vodafone is a leading telecommunications company in Europe and Africa. We are the largest mobile and fixed network operator in Europe and a leading global IoT connectivity provider. Our M-Pesa technology platform in Africa enables over 48m people to benefit from access to mobile payments and financial services. We operate mobile and fixed networks in 21 countries and partner with mobile networks in 49 more. As of 31 March 2021, we had over 300m mobile customers, more than 28m fixed broadband customers, over 22m TV customers and we connected more than 123m IoT devices.

“With a long history of groundbreaking industry-firsts, Samsung is proud to be making 5G a reality for European consumers by collaborating with some of our most trusted operator partners to introduce Galaxy S10 5G to the market this summer,” said DJ Koh, President and CEO of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. “For over a decade, Samsung has spearheaded major advances in global connectivity, leveraging a heritage in visionary innovation and unrivalled expertise in hardware and services. These new mobile network partnerships reflect our deep commitment to ongoing open collaboration, so that we can continue to deliver meaningful innovations and unparalleled connectivity that will fundamentally change the way we work, communicate and consume content.”

Partnering with major mobile network operators in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, Galaxy S10 5G pioneers Samsung’s vision for global 5G network connectivity. Galaxy S10 5G users will be able to experience true 5G connectivity via the following operators:

• – Deutsche Telekom
• – EE
• – Orange
• – Sunrise
• – Swisscom
• – TIM
• – Telefonica
• – Vodafone

“Deutsche Telekom is very excited to work together with Samsung as partner for the development of best in class 5G experience,” said Tim Hoettges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG.

“EE customers enjoy the UK’s best mobile experience today, and as leaders in 5G and converged smart networks we’ll be going even further to keep them connected wherever they go,” said Marc Allera, CEO of BT’s Consumer division. “We’ll be launching 5G across 16 UK cities this year with leading partners such as Samsung to give our customers the very best experience – providing the fastest and most reliable connection when they need it the most.”

“We’re proud of this new milestone in our partnership with Samsung,” said Stéphane Richard, Chairman and CEO at Orange Group. “We welcome the availability of their first 5G device ready for European 5G networks.”

“We intend to continue being a frontrunner in the development of 5G in Europe and we have been working together with Samsung to speed up the launch of 5G services through their 5G smartphone,” said Luigi Gubitosi, Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Telecom Italia. “We have set ourselves a challenging schedule and we will use every tool available to achieve our goal of playing a leading role in the deployment of 5G in Italy.”

“Vodafone is excited to partner again with Samsung at the start of the 5G era, working together to provide customers with the benefits of advanced speeds and great services from Vodafone’s 5G network during 2019,” said Nick Read, Vodafone Group CEO.

Committed to an open approach to collaboration and with major partnerships around the globe, Samsung is supported by leading global service providers to bring secure, trusted and powerful 5G connectivity to the region. Up to roughly 20 times faster than 4G, 5G on Galaxy S10 5G introduces hyper-fast streaming and download speeds, powerful mobile hot-spotting, 4K video calling and an elevated mobile gaming experience. The first-ever true 5G smartphone, Galaxy S10 5G champions a seamless and near-instantaneous mobile experience, delivering the next step in mobile connectivity today.

For more information on Galaxy S10 5G, visit news.samsung.com/galaxy, http://www.samsungmobilepress.com or www.samsung.com/galaxy.