Samsung and orange start revolutionary 5G test in Southwest France!

Samsung and orange start revolutionary 5G test in Southwest France!

The world of mobile phone technology is currently experiencing exciting developments, especially with a view to cooperation between Orange and Samsung. On July 3, 2025, the two companies successfully carried out the first 4G and 5G calls on a virtualized RAN (VRAN) and Open RAN network in Southwest France. This step marks an important milestone in its strategic partnership and promotes urgently needed innovations in the mobile infrastructure.

The implementation of Open Ran is more than just a trend - it develops into a real solution to the challenges in telecommunications. The pilot, which transfers orange’s ambitions from the laboratory environment into practice, shows promising results with regard to network quality and reliability. Field trials, supported by Samsung's advanced VRAN technology, have the potential, the way we consider networks.

strategic projects with a future perspective

Orange plans to expand the tests to other locations in southwest and west France until the end of 2025. This initiative is part of a comprehensive strategy for diversifying the supplier base and the introduction of flexible, cloud-based network architectures. Emmanuel Lugagne Delpon, CTO Networks at Orange France, described the successful first call as an important step for future cloud-ran implementations. With this attitude, orange shows that it has a good knack for innovation.

Samsung itself brings a variety of technologies into this project. With support for several radio bands, including O-RAN-compliant radios, the frequencies of which range from 700 MHz to 3.5 GHz, the company is well positioned. The use of the Cognitive Network Operations Suite from Samsung, which includes AI-based orchestration tools, will help automate the network operations.

partnership and technical synergies

The collaboration between Orange and Samsung is not only efficient, but also follows previous successes, such as the first 2G VRAN call via open in Romania. This partnership is strengthened by the support of leading technology companies such as Dell Technologies, Intel and Wind River, which provide important components for the success of the pilot project. June Moon, Executive Vice President at Samsung Networks, emphasized the quality and reliability of the technologies provided and showed how important this cooperation is for the development of next generation networks.

Another advantage of these virtualized networks is to improve energy efficiency and the possibility of quickly integrating new technologies into the network infrastructure. Samsung actively promotes the broad introduction of network sharing in Europe to reduce hardware costs and energy consumption. This could be particularly important in times of increasing energy monitoring and efficiency requirements.

The initiative of Orange and Samsung is in line with the general trend that shapes the telecommunications industry. Open, virtualized radio access networks should not only reduce costs, but also accelerate innovations. According to the promising results of the field tests, this could be the beginning of a new era in network technology, which opens up completely new possibilities in the coming years.

So it is to be hoped that the partnership between Orange and Samsung continues to bear fruit and that we will soon surprise us with even more exciting developments in the field of mobile phone technology. It remains exciting what the future has in this constantly developed technical environment. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch a detailed analysis on 5G.NRW