Samsung Electronics announced it has signed a commercial agreement with New Zealand’s largest mobile carrier, Spark, to take part in building Spark’s 5G network in 2020.
The South Korean vendor carrier out 5G trials with Spark last year.These trials used Samsung’s 5G end-to-end solutions to test and verify the potential of next generation network technology at Spark Lab.
Under the terms of the new agreement, Samsung Networks will provide Spark with its latest 5G New Radio (NR) solutions, including massive MIMO radios. Since April 2019, Samsung’s massive MIMO solution has been commercially proven through nationwide roll-outs led by all three mobile operators in Korea. The solution will also be commercialized in Japan this month.
“We are pleased to have Samsung as a 5G vendor for our mobile services, not only are they able to offer us a huge amount of global best practice and network infrastructure knowledge, they can also provide a proven immersive 5G experience for our customers,” said Rajesh Singh, GM of value management of Spark New Zealand. “One of the main reasons we selected Samsung was their 5G NR solutions which deliver enhanced network capability, high quality connections, and state of the art technology.”
“We are excited to begin this collaboration with Spark, which is a big step in bringing the power of 5G to New Zealand,” said WooJune Kim, EVP and head of global sales and marketing for the networks business at Samsung Electronics. “We are looking forward to helping Spark unlock the future of mobile connectivity, and are ready to support the new level of 5G experiences they will deliver to their customers with our next generation network solution.”
Samsung Networks claims to be one of the first companies to successfully deliver 5G end-to-end solutions ranging from chipset, radio, and core to cloud platform for both mid-band (2.5 GHz/3.5 GHz) and mmWave (28 GHz/39 GHz) frequencies.
The company has been supporting 5G commercial services in Korea and the U.S, and it is supporting the commercial launch of 5G in Japan. In addition, Samsung is further expanding its global footprint rapidly to new markets including Canada and New Zealand.
Last year, Spark said that the carrier had selected Samsung, Nokia and Huawei as the preferred RAN equipment suppliers for its 5G network, In addition, Spark will continue to use Cisco and Ericsson for separate elements of its existing network core, which has already been upgraded to ensure it is Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G capable. .
In November 2019, Spark New Zealand announced the launch of 5G service in selected areas of Westport, Clyde, Twizel, Tekapo and Hokitika., using the 2.6 GHz band and equipment from Nokia.
The operator had initially launched 5G in Alexandra for a limited number of enterprise and consumer customers.
