Samsung and AWS Power Innovation in Virtualized RAN Networks on Public Cloud

As a leader in software-centric network transformation, Samsung keeps pushing the boundaries of mobile network technologies with its long-term R&D vision. Samsung has been at the forefront of evolving telecom networks from traditional hardware-based to flexible software-based architecture, by embracing a virtual and open approach. Collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to bring end-to-end virtualized and software-centric networks to the market and to our customers is an integral part of accomplishing this vision. Simply put, it is all about integrating Samsung’s end-to-end mobile network including core, radio access and management solutions with AWS to provide operators and enterprises more choices to build and manage their networks in a simple, flexible, scalable, sustainable and high-performing way.

Samsung has been successfully deploying its fully virtualized radio access network (vRAN) solution in large-scale commercial deployments with leading operators in North America, Europe and Asia. Samsung’s leadership and experience make it uniquely positioned as a lead vendor and it is the reason why so many operators are choosing Samsung for their vRAN deployments.

Furthermore, Samsung continues to offer enhanced vRAN and Open RAN capabilities to operators including enhanced energy efficiency, optimized performance, multiple radio access technology (2G/4G/5G) and AI-based automation via its smart vRAN 3.0 software solution.

Earlier this year, Samsung and AWS marked a major milestone by successfully completing a data call using Samsung’s versatile vRAN software, Samsung’s vRAN accelerator card and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances powered by AWS Graviton processors, which are widely deployed across AWS Regions. This demonstrated how Samsung’s vRAN is easily adaptable to not only on-premise COTS servers but also the public cloud due to its containerized and cloud-native-based flexibility and scalability.

In addition, Samsung’s vCU running on AWS Local Zones has been deployed in a Tier 1 operator’s nationwide commercial network (virtualized Open RAN) in the U.S. since 2022 and it provides seamless mobile services for millions of end users. At the same time, Samsung has successfully carried out several trials using its cloud-native vCore and AWS infrastructure with global operators, verifying the performance of virtual roaming gateway services as well as the ability to flexibly scale core capacity using AI-based traffic prediction.

This crossover between Samsung and AWS provides an exciting glimpse of the possibilities ahead. It enables operators and especially enterprises to build end-to-end virtualized networks over the public cloud in an easy, simple, and cost-effective manner by leveraging Samsung’s automation solution (CognitiV Network Operations Suite) as well as AWS services spanning cloud telemetry, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), rather than building their own data centers and handing the complicated system integration by themselves. This joint solution offers superior network automation, analytics, fault management and performance management, ensuring more flexibility, agility and sustainability across the layers of the RAN and cloud stack. It also allows operators and enterprises to benefit from faster time-to-market (TTM) for the introduction of new services.

Samsung is spearheading 5G innovation through trailblazing collaboration with AWS, providing a glimpse into the future of end-to-end virtualized networks and offering creative paths and improved capabilities to satisfy various demands for next-generation services and features.

This joint advancement illustrates Samsung’s commitment and innovative spirit to pushing boundaries in virtualized networks, building a strong ecosystem and providing our customers with flexibility, scalability, reliability and sustainability for next-generation connectivity.

Samsung and AWS will demonstrate an end-to-end virtualized network running on AWS at Mobile World Congress 2024 from February 26-29 in Barcelona. If you are attending the show, stop by AWS (AWS next level, South Entrance, Upper Walkway) or Samsung (Hall 2, 2M20) at the Fira Barcelona Gran Via to learn more.