Virgin Media O2 flirts with Samsung as a RAN vendor

Newly-merged UK operator group VMO2 is going to conduct trials with Samsung to test the compatibility of its 4G and 5G kit with legacy networks.
Samsung is a relatively recent arrival to the mobile network kit game and thus faces concerns about its ability to play nice with 2G and 3G legacy networks. The only way to allay these is to lob its kit into a mature network to see what happens and it seems VMO2 has volunteered to be just such a guinea pig.
So Samsung baseband units, 5G massive MIMO rad