Verizon has deployed over 10,000 virtualized radio access network (vRAN) cell sites across the U.S., officially crossing the half-way point for its 2025 goal of 20,000 vRAN deployments countrywide.

The news follows Verizon’s C-band rollout update earlier this week touting its spectrum portfolio to be 13 months “ahead of the original schedule,” a portfolio the carrier is heavily relying on to power its 5G aspirations.

Samsung has aided Verizon in moving the site deployments from 8,000 [announced in September] past the 10,000 threshold this week.

A majority of the vRAN deployment has been with Samsung since its blockbuster deal with Verizon in mid-2020. That deal saw the carrier boot long-time vendor Nokia from the prime agreement.

Since dropping over $45 billion on a majority of the C-band licenses up for auction last year, Verizon has been aggressively inserting the spectrum into sites across the country in a move to bolster its 5G network capacity.

Adam Koeppe, SVP of technology and planning at Verizon, explained in an interview that the sites are a mix of new equipment installed at existing locations and new sites. He explained updates to legacy sites are typically based on what services and spectrum Verizon wants to eventually deploy at those sites.

While the carrier moves to reach its 2025 goal, many of its existing sites will not receive updates. “Some portion of the network will likely remain on a physical architecture for some time, but the vast majority of our sites going forward will be in the vRAN architecture,” Koeppe said.

“We know that there’s inherent benefits to that architecture. We see it already deployed and we’re reaping the benefits already. So from an architecture standpoint, and a growth standpoint, that’s how the network’s going to be built.” The carrier is also working to get Ericsson vRAN equipment into its network, according to Koeppe.