Equipment vendors Samsung and Cisco, in partnership with US telecoms provider Verizon, have announced the successful deployment of what the trio claim is ‘the first multi-vendor end-to-end 5G trial network’ in Ann Arbor, a suburb of metropolitan Detroit (US). Five US cities are scheduled to begin trials in the second quarter of 2017, with pilot trials in a total of eleven markets expected by the middle of the year. The solution included a 5G virtualised packet core as part of the Cisco Ultra Services Platform with Cisco Advanced Services and Samsung virtual RAN (vRAN) solutions, paired with Samsung’s 5G Radio base stations and 5G home routers, which deliver broadband services to Verizon’s trial customers. The 5G trial highlighted the readiness of key 5G technologies, paving the way for deployment of commercial 5G networks, while also demonstrating that service providers could deploy 5G networks specialised to their market needs by selecting individual network infrastructure components from multiple vendors.