Samsung Electronics with Vodafone and Orange, two of the largest operators in Europe, announced the companies completed the first 4G calls over shared commercial networks in rural areas of Romania based on Open RAN in a pilot project. By leveraging Samsung virtualized Radio Access Network, the two operators can take advantage of the greater flexibility and innovation brought by the Open RAN ecosystem gained through Samsung’s open, software-based network solutions.

“Samsung has been raising the bar on what’s 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, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “As we continue to expand our footprint across Europe, including the recent large-scale Open RAN deployments in the U.K., we continue to push our innovative boundaries, empowering networks in Europe.”

Following Vodafone UK’s Open RAN deployment and the successful integration tests in Orange’s Open RAN lab in France, Samsung provided its multi-RAT vRAN software as well as Open RAN-compliant radios for this initiative. As part of their pilot project, both operators have already achieved successful 4G calls over their respective Open RAN sharing sites and will soon introduce 2G, which has already been tested successfully in the lab, and then 5G. It will be the first time 2G is fully integrated within 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 allowing the sharing of network components, RAN sharing helps reduce hardware costs, energy consumption and the need for duplicate sites. RAN sharing will help advance wide-scale Open RAN adoption in Europe.

This milestone represents the capabilities of Open RAN, to modernize legacy hardware-based mobile networks, bringing more sustainability and intelligence to the RAN, as well as the ability to more quickly and efficiently introduce new services.

Samsung has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions, including chipsets, radios and cores. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung drives the industry to advance 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio, from vRAN 3.0, Open RAN, Core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools. The company currently provides network solutions to mobile operators that deliver connectivity to hundreds of millions of users worldwide.