Samsung AI-RAN contracts secured for South Korea industrial 5G pilots

These contracts move AI-RAN from theoretical network optimization to high-stakes industrial applications where predictable uplink and low latency are critical for video-heavy robotic control. For the streaming infrastructure ecosystem, this signals a shift toward localized edge compute over centralized cloud for real-time data processing. Samsung is positioning its integrated vRAN and AI stack as a blueprint for 6G, while SK Telecom’s multi-vendor approach will provide rare comparative data on hardware performance. Watch for early KPIs from the October 2026 field pilots to see if integrated AI-RAN delivers measurable productivity gains over conventional private 5G setups.

Samsung's NIS platform represents a compact edge architecture that consolidates vRAN, 5G SA core, and AI applications on a single Supermicro server powered by AMD EPYC 8004 CPUs with Wind River Cloud Platform. The company has positioned this integrated approach as a differentiator against disaggregated multi-vendor setups. In the SK Telecom project specifically, Samsung will compete directly against HFR, Ericsson, and Nokia in a multi-vendor bake-off where SKT plans to compare different CPU and GPU configurations and varying placements of AI servers and user-plane functions across the architecture. This comparative testing is unusual in private 5G deployments and will generate rare side-by-side performance data for industrial AI-RAN.

The Hyper AI Network program itself was established by South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Information Society Agency, which selected the KT-led and SKT-led consortia in July 2026 with a combined budget of approximately $12.7 million over two years. Samsung confirmed on September 23, 2026 that it is the only vendor selected for both KT and SK Telecom projects, giving it unique visibility into both industrial use cases: quadruped welding robots at HD Hyundai Samho's Yeongam shipyard under KT, and autonomous patrol robots with real-time HD video transfer at SK Incheon Petrochem under SK Telecom. The program is explicitly designed to produce technical inputs for Korea's 6G standardization roadmap.

Samsung's CognitiV Network Operations Suite handles the orchestration and automation layer above NIS, managing network lifecycle and providing SMO-like functions aligned with Open RAN management frameworks. The company has been building this software stack as part of its broader push toward AI-native networks. Samsung described the Hyper AI Network projects as a step toward embodied intelligence connectivity, where networks serve as platforms connecting humanoids and autonomous vehicles alongside industrial robots. The October 2026 field pilots will be among the first public tests of whether integrated AI-RAN delivers measurable latency and reliability gains over conventional private 5G in closed-loop robotic control scenarios.