Ericsson announced that it teamed up with SK Telecom Korea in December to carry out what it described as the first successful live demonstration of an end-to-end 5G network at its lab in Kista, Sweden. The partners used Cloud Core, virtual RAN and over-the-air NR/LTE interworking to achieve end-to-end data rates of more than 1Gbps and roundtrip latencies of about 4 milliseconds to a gateway outside of the core. The 5G New Radio (NR) used 800MHz bandwidth, running on 15GHz, said Ericsson. The company added that it conducted a similar demonstration with Telefonica on 22 December 2016 involving Cloud RAN.
Last month Ericsson announced a partnership with Qualcomm Technologies and AT&T to conduct interoperability testing and over-the-air field trials based on the 5G New Radio (NR) specifications being developed by 3GPP, which will form the basis of the global standards. The trials are expected to start in the second half 2017 in the US.
