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| SK Telecom Chief Technology Officer Choi Jin-sung speaks during a press conference at the 5G Global Innovation Center in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province, Thursday. / Courtesy of SK Telecom |
By Yoon Sung-won
SK Telecom opened a research facility for a fifth-generation (5G) network in Korea, Thursday.
The 5G Global Innovation Center has been established in cooperation with global IT firms including Samsung Electronics, Ericsson, Nokia, Intel and Rohde & Schwartz and is the world's first facility to develop and test the new network technologies.
Based on the new research center, the telecom company pledged to test-operate a new network in 2017 and commercialize a globally-standardized 5G network service by 2020, the first in the world.
"More than 40 million customers subscribe to long-term evolution (LTE) services in Korea and I believe it is time to move on to 5G. I hope the opening of this center will accelerate the introduction of the new telecom technology," SK Telecom Chief Technology Officer Choi Jin-sung said during a press conference at the center in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province.
"So far, we have talked about the 5G only from the perspective of providers including telecom operators, network equipment venders and device makers. But I believe more important things are the services which can realize scientific concepts that can improve customers' lives, experiences and value."
The CFO revealed confidence in achieving the goal of commercializing the 5G network service by 2020. Currently, a global organization named the "3rd Generation Partnership Project" is discussing standardization of the 5G network.
"In terms of technologies for systems, I believe we have already seen over 50 percent of progress now," Choi said. "But we need to redevelop technologies to follow standards when they are fixed. The 5G network is expected to be standardized by the latter half of 2018. Before then, we are likely to be able to test it when a tentative version of the 5G standard is released in 2017."
Senior officials from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the Institute for Information & Communications Technology Promotion as well as executives from Samsung Electronics, Ericsson, Nokia, Intel and Rohde & Schwartz attended the opening of the center.
The 5G Global Innovation Center hosts the 5G Testbed to verify network technologies, the Virtual Experience Room to exhibit related technologies such as virtual reality, robots and immersive displays, and the T Open Lab to supports startups.
Through a collaboration with Nokia, SK Telecom demonstrated the 19.1 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) mobile network, which is the world's fastest wireless data transmission ever developed so far, by combining the multiple antenna and super-high frequency data transmission technologies.
This is more than 250 times faster than 75 megabits-per-second speed, which was the maximum figure when the LTE service was first released in July 2011.
With Ericsson, the telecom company has demonstrated the 5G network slicing technology. It said this technology can divide one physical network system into multiple independent virtual networks to provide tailor-made services for each client.
In cooperation with Samsung Electronics, SK Telecom has developed what is called the 3D beam-forming technology. This can be used to overcome unfavorable network channel conditions in millimeter-wave, or mmWave, communications, the carrier said.
The two companies are verifying the performance of the 3D beam-forming technology using the mmWave band in the urban environment and will develop a system to deal with shadowing issues.
SK Telecom also said it will develop the next-generation wireless local area network and multiple antenna technologies while working with Rohde & Schwartz to research the mmWave at the center.
The carrier also showcased the 5G-related services such as the next-generation multimedia service based on virtual and augmented reality technologies, 5G robots, telemedicine education simulation and 4K ultra high-definition live broadcasting.
In particular, SK Telecom has collaborated with the world's leading broadcasting equipment maker Sony to build a 5G-based 4K live production system that can transmit ultra-high definition videos.
