Samsung is providing cloud-native 5G core and radio access network (RAN) equipment to NTT East’s private 5G network platform. The deal expands on past private 5G network work between the two companies.

The new agreement calls for Samsung to provide indoor and outdoor radio units, baseband radio units, and its cloud-native 5G Macro Core platform to NTT East. Samsung said it was also working with other vendors on the project, specifically calling out Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). These products support the 4.7 GHz band that in Japan is dedicated to private 5G networks.

The deal follows up on an agreement earlier this year with NTT East to power the operator’s private 5G network services in the east areas of Japan. This followed trials of Samsung’s 5G standalone (SA) network core in test environments.

NTT’s global division has been aggressively pushing its private 5G services in the U.S. That division earlier this year signed a deal with VMware to provide managed edge and private 5G services targeted at those rapidly expanding markets.

That agreement has VMware adopting NTT’s Private 5G Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform that the Japanese telecom giant initially unveiled last year. VMware will plug this platform into its edge offering.

Conversely, NTT is using VMware’s Edge Compute Stack, which was launched at last year’s VMworld event, to power its new edge-as-a-service product. The VMware platform is an integrated virtual machine (VM) and container-based stack for edge-native apps. The NTT product will include its private 5G NaaS platform, though each service can be adopted separately if needed.

NTT last month also expanded a deal with the city of Las Vegas to deploy and provision a far-reaching private network that can support local businesses, government, educational facilities.

The work will see NTT tap into its ecosystem to more than double the number of network access points already deployed in Las Vegas. These access points will use Citizen Broadband Radio Spectrum (CBRS) and be open to third-party access points and end-user devices that support that band.

The deal comes as analyst firms continue to pump up the private 5G network opportunity.

GlobalData this week release results of an IT survey that found 82% of the 1,400 enterprises surveyed are planning to add private cellular networks to their budgets.

“Leading mobile operators are gaining new customers from private networks and anticipate substantial future revenues for connectivity, as well as value-added services such as design, testing, proof of concept, integration, application enablement, edge computing, and ongoing management,” GlobalData Principal Analyst Kathryn Weldon wrote. “Private networks are also key to the growth of next-generation (IoT) services. These networks are also a primary enterprise use case for 5G, although approximately 80% of deployments so far are still using 4G LTE.”