Samsung and channel partner T3 Broadband marked their first customer win together, inking a deal with Mercury Broadband to deploy CBRS gear and services for fixed wireless access service across multiple states.
Mercury Broadband is a Midwest service provider headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, and the implementation covers upwards of 500 sites in rural areas of Kansas, Missouri and Indiana.
Samsung’s Derek Johnston told Fierce the vendor is excited about the deal, noting that for a smaller MNO it’s a large deployment, with opportunities in other states as well. Samsung cited expansion to additional states through 2025.
Mercury, which is focused on “last-mile” connectivity with a mix of fiber optics and wireless technologies, is utilizing the general authorized access (GAA) portion of the shared CBRS band for FWA. CBRS was seen by some as a boon for FWA when the FCC opened up the airwaves because of the coverage and capacity offered at 3.5 GHz and easier access to spectrum with GAA.
For Mercury, Samsung is providing gear including 64T64R Massive MIMO radios and CDU 50 baseband units, while t3 is heading up engineering of Mercury’s network. Both partners will support service requests.
Teaming up with t3 in September expands the vendor’s ability to reach rural providers with CBRS gear, particularly with a focus on FWA, and augments its direct-to-provider relationships, Samsung’s Alok Shah VP of business development and marketing told Fierce at the time.
The partners first deal comes after successful tests on active sites in the second half of 2021, where Mercury saw significant performance improvements.
Johnston, head of marketing and 5G business at Samsung, cited a 119% increase in speeds (on average across a site), which he said was more than double compared to other vendors and across previous implementations Mercury had seen. Spectral efficiency improved using Samsung’s massive MIMO in the trials, which also showed overall reductions in capex and opex costs. Samsung attributed cost reductions to optimizing the number of towers expected to be needed – down from 2,500 to 1,000.
Samsung's CBRS Massive MIMO units became commercially available to all operators in 2020.
“Samsung and t3 Broadband have delivered a solution that will make a real difference for our customers in rural areas, enabling us to offer them the best in broadband connectivity,” said Garrett Wiseman, CEO of Mercury Broadband, in the announcement. “Everyone should have access to stable, high-speed Internet service, no matter their location, and with CBRS, we can extend our wireless network to more hard-to-reach areas. Samsung and t3‘s reliable 5G-capable solution will support us and our customers as we expand.”
Mercury is going to use Samsung CBRS gear down the line to expand new services using FWA, including for businesses and smart home experiences via an advanced managed Wi-Fi solution that can control different functions, across home security to smart applications, through a single device.
Tackling rural broadband
Already a RAN supplier to tier one operators such as Verizon, rural broadband in the U.S. is another segment Samsung is working to make headway on within its network business. It's also where it’s taking a channel partner approach, such as the t3 match up.
It’s “an area where we think there’s a sizable opportunity and a lot of interest,” Johnston said of the rural broadband segment. As for drivers, one reason it’s seeing a lot of interest is the large amount of government funding being funneled for projects to help close the digital divide, he noted.
To that point, Mercury Broadband is an MNO leveraging the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) to deliver FWA in the three states previously mentioned. RDOF Phase I results show Mercury Wireless won $68.3 million for broadband in Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio.
In addition to T3, another move to reach rural communities and sell its CBRS wares is a new collaboration between Samsung and Avista Edge, announced last week.
In that pairing, Samsung was chosen as a CBRS and compact core provider for Avista, which delivers FWA 5G technology to help electric utilities and ISPs serve up high-speed internet in underserved communities.
Johnston views it as one of the more interesting CBRS 5G-ready use cases, saying Avista’s go-to-market is compelling for electric utilities to simply add the service on and provide their customers with, in many cases, a broadband alternative where there’s only one operator, or in unserved areas
“It’s a very interesting go to market model and I think it’s definitely an area where we’ll see some real growth,” he said.
As FierceTelecom reported last month, rural electric co-ops are one of the fastest growing groups of broadband providers. Rural electric co-ops showed up at RDOF, collectively winning $1.6 billion across five different consortiums representing 180 co-ops.
One area in the rural or regional space where Samsung isn’t actively playing yet is the FCC’s rip and replace program, where providers are swapping out insecure Huawei and ZTE gear – with initial estimated reimbursement costs coming in at $5.6 billion. Ericsson and Nokia have each secured wins related to the rip and replace effort.
Samsung’s lack of participation there has partly been a function of existing gear that’s available to support operator’s current spectrum assets, according to Johnston. Samsung is a relative newer entrant on networks compared to Nokia and Ericsson, where the South Korean vendor’s U.S. deployments are focused on supporting 4G and 5G services and spectrum bands.
It’s much easier for incumbents, he noted, to provide technology they already have with little adaptation required.
Still, some newer entrants, such as software-focused Mavenir, are also vying for rip and replace related contracts. Mavenir is swapping out Huawei gear for Montana-based Triangle Communications.