At GSMA Mobile World Congress Shanghai, SK Telecom has signed a MoU with Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson to cooperate in the development of the 5G core network.
As end user traffic must go through not only radio access network but also core network before reaching the Internet, the core network is key to the successful implementation and commercialization of 5G, according to SK Telecom.
Through the partnership, the three parties will deploy trial network in Korea and Germany based on key 5G technologies, including Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), Software-Defined Telecommunications Infrastructure (SDTI), distributed cloud, and network slicing technologies.
The core network is capable of supporting a variety of network functions such as user authentication, mobility and session managements, voice calls, and Internet connectivity. It will also provide optimized end-user experiences by providing consistent quality of services and roaming experiences for advanced 5G use cases with enhanced global reach, the company said.
More on SK Telecom 5G: SK Telecom demos software-defined telecom infrastructure for 5G
As SK Telecom in Korea and Deutsche Telekom in Germany collaborate with ecosystem, the alliance will jointly develop 5G use cases, conduct global marketing promotions, and work for potential standardization.
SK Telecom and Ericsson have demonstrated 26.9 Gbps transmission speed over the air, the fastest 5G transmission speed demonstrated so far, according to the companies. The two companies have successfully demonstrated the 26.9 Gbps in May 2016 in Korea.
As part of this agreement, the companies are also planning to apply SDTI to the 5G pilot system by the end of 2016. SDTI refers to an infrastructure platform where all mobile network infrastructure components, such as CPU, memory and storage, are disaggregated as customizable modules that can be flexibly and dynamically recomposed together to provide the optimal level of infrastructure scale for various 5G services.
Rajani Baburajan
editor@telecomlead.com
