Following successful pilots during recent years, the companies advance to the next stage for expanding vRAN and Open RAN deployments in 2026
Samsung Electronics and Orange Group, one of Europe’s leading telecommunications operators, today announced an expanded partnership, entering the next phase of their virtualized RAN (vRAN) and Open RAN projects in Europe. Building on successful pilots completed since 2023, the companies have agreed to extend the number of vRAN and Open RAN sites in 2026.
With the seamless integration of Samsung’s vRAN and Open RAN solutions in previous projects, the operator’s live network delivered enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) and an improved end-user experience, showing performance maturity and operational effectiveness comparable to or better than those of traditional RAN solutions.
Samsung and Orange have been working together to ensure that vRAN and Open RAN are viable solutions in building sustainable networks. This open and flexible architecture not only enhances network resilience but also fosters innovation by enabling the operator to leverage optimal solutions.
In this next phase, the companies are further advancing their vRAN and Open RAN collaboration by integrating the latest processors into Orange’s networks. This includes Samsung’s AI-powered vRAN with Intel Xeon 6 system-on-a-chip (SoC), which runs on a single commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) server from Dell with a cloud platform from Wind River.
This upgraded solution with enhanced computing power enables a powerful, single server to meet high-capacity configuration requirements from Orange, resulting in a smaller footprint, improved performance, reduced power consumption and simplified operations. This also helps the operator to handle intensive workloads and AI applications on a single server by flexibly managing network resources and applying unused computing capacity to run AI and edge applications on its existing network.
“Moving forward to the next chapter of our collaboration with Orange demonstrates how Samsung’s software-driven, open solutions are a proven, robust foundation that offer reliable network performance and services to operators and customers alike,” said Angelo Jeongho Park, Executive Vice President and Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “We’re committed to advancing virtualized and open platforms as beacons of innovation that can harness AI to meet the high demands of future networks.”
“From our first call for the pilot project to our current phase in the field, Samsung’s virtualized RAN and Open RAN have proved significant performance achievements in Orange’s networks,” said Laurent Leboucher, Orange Group CTO. “With new deployments planned ahead, we look forward to further accelerating the transformation of Orange’s networks to be AI-ready.”
This strategic collaboration underscores the continued commitment of both companies to driving innovation based on an open architecture, delivering cutting-edge solutions and AI capabilities into the network.
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.
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