Samsung Electronics today announced that it has signed a commercial agreement with Spark New Zealand to take part in building Spark’s 5G network in 2020.

Spark, New Zealand’s largest mobile carrier, has been working with Samsung on network innovation, starting with 5G trials in 2019. These trials used Samsung’s 5G end-to-end solutions to test and verify the potential of next generation network technology at Spark Lab. The trials also demonstrated to Spark the high performance of Samsung’s 5G technology along with the possibilities it could bring through higher speeds and lower latency, leading to the commercial agreement.

Samsung Networks will provide Spark with its latest 5G New Radio (NR) solutions, including Massive MIMO radios that have a slim design profile, are lightweight for ease of installation, and provide space savings on tower tops. This provides carriers with more flexible, scalable 5G solutions that are simple and cost-effective to deploy, and accelerate commercial 5G availability. 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, General Manager 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, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Sales & Marketing, 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 is 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 (2.5GHz/3.5GHz) and mmWave (28GHz/39GHz) frequencies. The company has been supporting 5G commercial services in leading commercial markets, including Korea and the U.S., where the majority of worldwide 5G subscribers are located currently, 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.