South Korean operator SK Telecom has signed a MoU with Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson to cooperate in the development of a 5G core network. The three partners will deploy a trial network in Korea and Germany based on 5G technologies, including NFV, SDTI (Software-Defined Telecommunications Infrastructure), distributed cloud, and network slicing. As SK Telecom in Korea and Deutsche Telekom in Germany collaborate with the ecosystem, the alliance will jointly develop 5G use cases, conduct global marketing promotions, and work for potential standardization.
SK says the core network can be described as the control tower of telecommunication network, performing important features to provide services including user authentication, mobility and session managements, voice calls, and internet connectivity.
Additionally, at the GSMA booth at Mobile World Congress Shanghai, SK Telecom and Ericsson have demonstrated 26.9 Gbps transmission speed over the air, which is the fastest 5G transmission speed demonstrated so far, SK said. The two companies demonstrated the 26.9 Gbps in May in Korea.
The partners are also displaying Software-Defined Telecommunications Infrastructure (SDTI), an infrastructure platform that will be applied to the 5G pilot system by end-2016.
