At least a portion of the deal is confirmed to relate directly to 5G
Samsung has snagged a five-year, $6.6 billion contract with Verizon that primarily covers installing and upgrading the U.S. mobile provider’s infrastructure as part of the preparation for providing next-generation services.
While little has been released about the details of the contract, including the specific equipment being provided to Verizon, Samsung said in a statement that the pair will “continue to push the boundaries of 5G innovation,” confirming that at least a portion of the deal is directly related to 5G.
Dell’Oro Group recently released a report on the 5G network equipment landscape which says Samsung currently lays claim to approximately 13% of the market for 5G network sales, where it is following behind Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei.
Samsung’s success in securing this deal is considered a hit to Nokia. The Finnish vendor also sought to be Verizon’s provider, according to Reuters, which went on to say that an analyst at investment firm Liberum Janardan Menon commented that the loss might prevent Nokia from being able to invest in technology at the same rate at its competition.
Samsung was also listed as one of Verizon’s partners for the recent completion of what the mobile provider called the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized 5G data session.
“Virtualizing the entire network from the core to the edge has been a massive, multi-year redesign effort of our network architecture that simplifies and modernizes our entire network,” said Adam Koeppe, senior vice president of technology and planning for Verizon. “Verizon has been on the leading edge of virtualizing the core over the past few years and has been bullish in the design and development of open RAN technology, as well as in the testing of that technology with great success.”
