Japan’s NTT DoCoMo tapped Samsung Electronics to provide a deeper pool of 5G radio access network (RAN) equipment to support the carrier’s diverse mid-band and millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum holdings.

The deal, which builds on past work between the two companies, calls for Samsung to provide radios supporting the 3.7 GHz, 4.5 GHz, and 28 GHz bands. That last band is from a new mmWave Samsung radio unit (RU) that the vendor said weighs less than 10 pounds.

Samsung early last year scored a deal to provide NTT DoCoMo with 5G radios to support the 3.4 GHz band. The vendor said its 3.4 GHz, 3.7 GHz, and 4.5 GHz radios are compliant with the Open RAN specification and that the companies have been testing interoperability with different NTT DoCoMo network vendors.

NTT DoCoMo commenced commercial 5G services in early 2020, and included open RAN-compliant equipment provided by Fujitsu, NEC, and Nokia. The carrier more recently signed a partnership with South Korea’s SK Telecom (SKT) to develop new 5G and 6G cellular technologies and deployment plans taking advantage of open and virtualized RAN (vRAN) technology.

The latest deal bolsters Samsung’s RAN momentum.

The vendor last month scored a deal with NTT East to provide cloud-native 5G core and RAN equipment to the provider’s private 5G network platform. That deal followed on an agreement earlier this year for Samsung to power the operator’s private 5G network services in the east areas of Japan, and followed trials of Samsung’s 5G standalone (SA) network core in test environments.

Samsung also secured a deal with Comcast to activate the cable giant’s deep spectrum holdings and become an infrastructure-owning 5G cellular operator targeting market heavyweights Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile US. Comcast will use Samsung’s 5G RAN equipment for its Xfinity Mobile service, including a newly developed 5G Strand Small Cell that is designed to be mounted on Comcast’s existing aerial cable lines. This all-in-one piece of equipment is central to the deployment as it will allow Comcast to mount cellular antennas where it’s already running cable connections for wireless backhaul.

A recent Dell’Oro Group report noted the vendor has been gaining RAN market share at the expense of its China-based rivals Huawei and ZTE outside of their home country. This could accelerate as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules prohibiting domestic telecommunication operators from acquiring and using networking and other equipment from China-based vendors, including Huawei.