South Korea's two largest mobile operators, KT and SK Telecom, have each selected Samsung Electronics for artificial intelligence radio access network projects, according to a Fierce Network report.

Neither operator has disclosed contract values, deployment schedules or the technical scope of the engagements.

What does AI-RAN change in a mobile network?

AI-RAN applies machine learning to the radio access network, the layer of a mobile system that handles the wireless link between a user's device and the carrier's core. The technology sits alongside broader operator efforts to virtualise base station functions on commercial off-the-shelf servers, a transition vendors including Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia have positioned as a stepping stone toward cloud-native 6G architectures.

Operators and vendors have argued the approach can lift spectral efficiency, lower base station power consumption and let carriers host third-party AI workloads on the same compute infrastructure that serves subscribers. Samsung co-founded the AI-RAN Alliance at Mobile World Congress in early 2024 alongside NVIDIA, T-Mobile US and a group of operators and academic partners, framing the work as preparation for 6G networks expected to deploy commercially later this decade.

Why does a Samsung win at home carry weight?

The selection matters first inside South Korea. Samsung Networks has long supplied domestic carriers on 5G base stations, 4G LTE core and fixed-line access gear, but in the global RAN market the vendor trails Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei. A simultaneous win with KT and SK Telecom gives Samsung two flagship reference accounts at a moment when both operators are publicly repositioning around artificial intelligence. KT has folded AI into its network roadmap. SK Telecom has framed AI infrastructure as the centrepiece of its post-restructuring strategy.

For Samsung, the dual Korean engagement provides an AI-RAN reference architecture it can carry into overseas tenders. European and US operators have so far treated AI-RAN as a research line item rather than a procurement category, and the AI-RAN Alliance's published deliverables remain pre-commercial.

What does the announcement change for operators and Samsung?

The practical question for KT and SK Telecom subscribers is whether the AI-RAN work produces measurable network improvement. The industry has yet to publish standardised AI-RAN performance benchmarks, and Korean deployments, if they reach field scale, would offer the first carrier-grade proof points that AI-native radio code paths hold up under live traffic.

For Samsung, the same question applies overseas. Network operators in the United States and parts of Europe are expected to begin 6G trial procurement in 2026, by which point Samsung will need more than domestic Korean references to compete with Ericsson and Nokia on equal commercial terms.

Will the engagements translate into market share?

Three signals will determine whether this announcement becomes a commercial story rather than a research line item. First, whether KT or SK Telecom publishes a target deployment timeline or coverage share. Second, whether Samsung discloses the base station and compute footprint of the Korean projects. Third, whether a non-Korean operator names Samsung on a comparable AI-RAN tender before the end of 2026. Until one of those events occurs, the engagement reads as technology validation rather than market share. The Fierce Network report did not specify whether the KT and SK Telecom engagements share a common framework or run as separate procurement tracks.