Samsung Electronics Wins AI-RAN Project Contracts from KT and SK Telecom; 5G SA Private Network Deployment to Begin in October

en.Wedoany.com Reported - Samsung Electronics announced that it has signed separate AI-RAN project contracts with South Korea's KT and SK Telecom, both of which are part of the Ministry of Science and ICT's "Hyper AI Network" initiative. Samsung will serve as the sole global network equipment supplier for the KT project and as the primary equipment supplier for the SK Telecom project. The projects are scheduled to begin in October 2026, deploying 5G Standalone (5G SA) private networks in industrial scenarios such as shipbuilding and petrochemicals, and conducting AI-RAN technology validation.

The KT project will conduct on-site validation at HD Hyundai Samho's shipyard in Yeongam, testing welding and painting robots as well as autonomous robots used for communication facility operations and maintenance. Samsung will provide the Network in a Server (NIS) platform and the CognitiV Network Operations Suite, where NIS integrates virtualized radio access network, AI core network, and AI applications, and adopts Supermicro edge servers, AMD EPYC 8004 server processors, and the Wind River cloud platform.

In the shipyard testing, the 5G private network will support AI quadruped welding robots in acquiring on-site environmental data and performing welding tasks. The relevant computing and network functions are deployed locally at the plant site, with vRAN and 5G SA core software running directly on edge servers, while retaining the ability to scale to GPU computing power to meet the computing needs of different industrial sites.

The SK Telecom project will conduct validation at SK Incheon Petrochem's petrochemical facilities, mainly testing autonomous inspection robots in hazardous areas and video-based monitoring applications. The inspection robots will transmit high-definition video in real time while moving, which will then be analyzed by an AI system to identify on-site anomalies and potential risks. Samsung will likewise provide the NIS platform, and the project will validate the local processing, real-time communication, and network automation capabilities of the AI-RAN network in a petrochemical production environment.

These two contracts represent further engineering deployment building on Samsung's previous AI-RAN R&D and network validation efforts with KT and SK Telecom respectively. Samsung and KT completed validation of commercial network AI-RAN optimization technology in 2025; Samsung and SK Telecom had also previously conducted joint R&D on 6G technologies including AI channel estimation, AI-RAN scheduling, and next-generation core networks. This round of projects further advances the validation scenarios to 5G SA industrial private networks at shipyards and petrochemical facilities.