Samsung claims biggest share of Korea's 5G rollout

Equipment from Samsung Electronics Co. represents the largest share the recent 5G network rollouts from all three mobile operates in Korea.

Korean operators have been transmitting 5G signals in Seoul and metropolitan areas since December 1, 2018 using 5G base station radios and 5G core solutions from Samsung’s Networks Business unit.

Specifically, Samsung has supplied 5G core solutions and more than 53,000 5G radio base stations to Korea’s three operators. The deployments used Samsung’s 5G Massive-MIMO Unit (MMU) radio base station in the 3.5GHz spectrum. The ability to re-use existing sites has been key to enabling the Korean operators to deploy a 5G network consisting of tens of thousands of radios within just a few months since the December 1st launch.

The virtualized 5G core solutions, provided to all three Korean operators for their 5G commercial launch, support both legacy 4G networks and next-generation 5G services in Non-Standalone (NSA) mode. Samsung will support the migration to Standalone (SA) mode through a future software upgrade. Samsung’s solution implements many of the key technologies of 5G networks, such as Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS), which are essential for network operators to scale their networks and support the new services enabled by 5G technology.

“Korea is one of the first markets in the world in which the 5G experience is opening up for consumers, and we’re thrilled to play a key role in the nationwide rollout of 5G with our unparalleled 5G network solutions,” said Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “As a longstanding innovator in the 5G space and one of the few vendors offering a full end-to-end 5G solution, Samsung is at the forefront of pushing the limits of 5G and beyond.”