SKT speeding up 5G deployment

By Lee Min-hyung

SK Telecom has started conducting over-the-air field trials for the fifth-generation (5G) network, in a move to lead standardizations in the next wireless era.

Under the plan, the company has joined forces with U.S.-based telecommunications equipment giants Qualcomm and Ericsson. The three-way collaboration is expected to be finalized in the latter half of next year, according to the Seoul-based mobile carrier.

For the trials, they will use antenna technologies developed by the third-generation partnership project (3GPP), a global association among groups of mobile carriers and telecommunications companies.

The move is expected to play a crucial part for the 3GPP to determine its final specifications for the global 5G network standard set to be unveiled in the first half of 2018.

“The three firms have partnered with one another since 2013 when they succeeded in testing core technologies for the long-term-evolution-advanced (LTE-A) network,” an SK Telecom spokesman said. “In this regard, the latest 5G trial initiative is also drawing keen interest from the telecommunications industry.”

Ulf Ewaldsson, senior vice president and CTO at Ericsson, said: “This important 5G standard-based trial collaboration will demonstrate compliance with 3GPP and support the accelerated commercialization of the global 3GPP 5G standard.”

Expectations are high for 5G, amid surging demand for mobile data with the rise of smartphones. Mobile carriers here expect the upcoming 5G era to pave the way for data transmissions 1,000 times faster than the existing LTE network.

Last year, mobile data traffic worldwide reached 3.7 exabytes per month, according to data from German-based statistics firm Statista, adding that the amount will exceed 30 exabytes per month by 2020 with an annual growth rate of 53 percent.

But as wireless data transmission becomes a key element for all emerging future technologies, including virtual reality, augmented reality and the cloud, its traffic is expected to rise more steeply for more years to come.

For instance, connected vehicles are all the rage in the IT industry, with not just carmakers, but IT firms ― including Samsung, Google and Apple ― tapping into the new growth area.

SK Telecom, for its part, has teamed up with BMW over converging its network expertise with the latter’s smart vehicle system. Last month, both firms conducted a 5G test drive under which BMW vehicles received traffic information ― including road conditions and speeds of nearby vehicles ― through SK Telecom’s 5G network systems.

At that time, both firms pledged to conduct joint research on such 5G areas as vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication and image detection.