Written by Catherine Sbeglia Nin for RCRWireless.com
In addition to Samsung, Dish is working with Dell, VMware and AWS on its 5G network
Per a new agreement, Samsung is supplying Dish Wireless with an initial shipment of 24,000 Open RAN-compliant radios and 5G virtualized RAN (vRAN) software solutions to help the operator accelerate its network deployment in the U.S. The Dish network is a greenfield, nationwide 5G network architected using cloud-native and Open RAN principles, with Kubernetes-based management at its heart.
The announcement is considered an expansion of the multi-year 5G Open RAN deal that the pair revealed last May, in which Samsung provided its comprehensive portfolio of 5G solutions, including its virtualized distributed unit (vDU), virtualized central unit (vCU) and Open RAN-compliant 5G radios. Samsung also built new dual-band and tri-band Open RAN-compliant radios specific for this deployment.
Junehee Lee, Samsung’s executive vice president and head of global sales & marketing, said the vendor is “thrilled” to be working with Dish, which he called “an innovator in mobile technologies.”
“This milestone advances the wide-scale deployment of Samsung’s vRAN in the U.S. and we look forward to continuing our work with DISH Wireless to accelerate 5G expansion and lead the delivery of next-generation connectivity across the country,” he said of the latest news.
According to Marc Rouanne, EVP and chief network officer at Dish Wireless, Samsung’s 5G vRAN solutions will support the operator as it works to cover 70% of the U.S. population. In June, the company said that its 5G build out had reached 20% of the population.
In addition to Samsung, Dish is working with several other Open RAN leaders such Dell, VMware and AWS.
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