Samsung Electronics, with Vodafone and Orange, two of Europe's largest operators, announced that the companies have completed the first 4G calls on shared commercial networks in rural areas of Romania based on Open RAN in a pilot project.
By leveraging Samsung's virtualized radio access network (vRAN), both operators can take advantage of the greater flexibility and innovation brought by the Open RAN ecosystem achieved through Samsung's software-based open network solutions.
“Samsung has been raising the bar for what is 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, Vice President executive and head of Global Sales and Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “As we continue to expand our presence across Europe, including recent large-scale Open RAN deployments in the UK, we continue to push our innovative boundaries, powering networks across Europe.”
Following Vodafone UK's Open RAN deployment and successful integration testing at Orange's Open RAN lab in France, Samsung has provided its multi-RAT vRAN software as well as Open RAN compatible radios for this initiative.
As part of their pilot project, both operators have already achieved successful 4G calls on their respective Open RAN sharing sites and will soon introduce 2G, which has already been successfully tested in the laboratory, and then 5G. It will be the first time that 2G will be fully integrated into 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 enabling the sharing of network components, RAN sharing helps reduce hardware costs, power consumption, and the need for duplicate sites. RAN sharing will help promote large-scale Open RAN adoption in Europe.
This milestone represents Open RAN's capabilities to modernize legacy hardware-based mobile networks, bringing greater sustainability and intelligence to the RAN, as well as the ability to introduce new services more quickly and efficiently.
Samsung has pioneered the successful delivery of end-to-end 5G solutions, including chipsets, radios and cores. Through continuous research and development, Samsung drives the industry to develop 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio, from vRAN 3.0, Open RAN, Core to private network solutions and AI-based automation tools. The company currently provides network solutions to mobile operators that provide connectivity to hundreds of millions of users around the world.
