Verizon and Samsung begin lab trials for new 5G mmWave indoor cell sites

Verizon has announced that its upcoming 5G mmWave in-building solution for indoor coverage and private 5G networking will be powered by Samsung and Corning. The two companies have been chosen by Verizon after an industry-wide request for proposal, and lab trials have begun using Samsung’s solution.

Samsung’s 5G mmWave indoor cell site solution will be advanced to field trials once testing will be successfully completed. According to Verizon, Samsung’s product provides a compact, discrete indoor 5G solution capable of delivering the high-throughput and lower-latency service levels to support Verizon enterprise customers’ in-building 5G service requirements.

Extending the 5G footprint for commercial and enterprise customers

Samsung’s 5G mmWave indoor cell site promises to bring the benefits of 5G indoors where mmWave signals have difficulties reaching when beamed in from outdoor 5G sites. Similar technologies that follow the same principles have been used for indoor 4G LTE before, so the concept is not entirely new. But the 5G mmWave indoor site should offer high reliability, capacity, and throughput, and allow a large number of users to utilize robust data applications simultaneously, claims Verizon.

The technology will eventually be used to provide 5G coverage inside facilities such as hospitals, schools, warehouses, retail stores, ports and more. In addition, the company says these indoor cell sites are a critical step on the way to private 5G networks for enterprise customers. They are one of the three basic components of a robust 5G network along with a private core and a Mobile Edge Compute (MEC) platform.

In other recent news, Samsung had signed a contract to supply Verizon with network equipment for the next five years. The deal is worth around $6.6 billion and covers 5G technologies.