Last month, Samsung successfully demonstrated SLA network slicing on its existing 5G network in Tokyo, Japan. Now, that demonstration appears to be paying off, as Samsung Electronics announced that it has been selected by Japanese network operator KDDI as the cloud-native 5G-independent (SA) core network provider.
A key advantage of Samsung’s 5G Core solution is its support for both 4G and 5G, which enables seamless migration from 4G standards to 5G. Samsung’s 5G Core solution provides geo-redundancy support and ensures network stability and reliability with overload control features that offset bursts of traffic spikes.
Samsung will support KDDI’s 5G SA network in Japan, and this new partnership is the result of years of collaboration between the two companies on various projects. Samsung and KDDI recently commercially deployed an open virtualized RAN (vRAN) site in Osaka, marking the world’s first commercial MU-MIMO implementation with O-RAN-compliant multi-vendor interoperability.
Samsung has previously enabled Verizon to deploy 10,000 5G vRAN sites in the U.S., with a goal of 20,000 sites by 2025. Samsung has also signed a multi-year patent license agreement with Nokia that allows the South Korean tech giant to use Nokia 5G technology.
