Samsung Electronics said Thursday it has launched a virtual open radio access network site running on the ultra-fast 5G network along with Dish Network, the fourth-largest telecommunications carrier in the US.

Earlier, Samsung had supplied an initial shipment of 24,000 Open RAN-compliant radios and 5G virtualized RAN software solutions to accelerate Dish’s network deployment across the US, which will allow to provide reliable and fast nationwide coverage to its network users.

“Samsung is a key player in the Dish Wireless Open RAN ecosystem, created in collaboration with additional Open RAN leaders like Dell, VMware, AWS and others,” said Marc Rouanne, executive vice president and chief network officer at Dish Wireless.

“Samsung’s 5G vRAN solutions and our shared innovation process allow Dish Wireless to continue the Dish 5G multi-vendor, open and interoperable cloud-native network buildout, as we progress to covering 70 percent of the US population,” he added.

The recent project came less than a year after the two companies announced their multi-year agreement in May last year. Dish Network chose Samsung to deploy the firm’s 5G Open-RAN-compliant vRAN solutions and radio units across the US. They joined forces to conduct field tests to successfully activate the first live Samsung-supported sites within the Dish Wireless 5G network.

“This milestone advances the wide-scale deployment of Samsung’s vRAN in the US and we look forward to continuing our work with Dish Wireless to accelerate 5G expansion and lead the delivery of next-generation connectivity across the country,” said Lee June-hee, executive vice president and head of global sales, marketing and networks business at Samsung Electronics.

In the meantime, Samsung also announced on Thursday that it has secured standardized 5G non-terrestrial networks modem technology for direct communication between smartphones and satellites, in remote areas that were previously unreachable by terrestrial networks.

By meeting the latest 5G NTN standards defined by the third-generation partnership project, Samsung has developed and simulated satellite technology using its Exynos Modem 5300 reference platform to predict satellite locations accurately and minimize frequency offsets caused by the Doppler shift, according to company officials.

The tech giant looks to ensure interoperability and scalability among services offered by global telecom carriers, mobile device makers and chip companies with the technology. Its Narrow-Band Internet of Things integrated with satellite connectivity is expected to eliminate the need for a separate high-power wireless antenna chip inside smartphones, the company said.