SK Telecom, Ericsson jointly study 5G networks

SK Telecom’s senior vice president Park Jin-hyo, left, shakes hands with Thomas Nern, a vice president at Ericsson at Ericsson’s headquarters in Stockholm on July 6 after signing an MOU. Provided by the company.

SK Telecom, the nation’s No. 1 mobile carrier, joined forces with global communications technology and services company Ericsson yesterday to research 5th generation communications networks.

The mobile carrier said yesterday it signed a memorandum of understanding for a joint study of 5G technology at Ericsson’s headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden on Sunday, local time.

The companies will study the next generation Small Cell, ultra-wideband technology, ultra-low latency transmission technology, which lowers data transmission delay times to 1 millisecond, and FDD (Frequency-division duplexing) and TDD (Time-division duplexing) convergence technologies, which are essential for the evolution of 5G.

In LTE and LTE-A services, the data transmission delay time is around 10 milliseconds.

The companies agreed to jointly study additional technologies that might be needed for the next generation networks.

“We are pleased to cooperate with Ericsson to lead the next generation 5G network technology,” said Park Jin-hyo, senior vice president and head of the network technology R&D center at SK Telecom.

“We will continue to take the lead in developing the most advanced technologies for the next generation.”

“SK Telecom is leading the Korean market, where LTE technology is being developed at the fastest speed in the world,” said Thomas Nern, a vice president at Ericsson.

“We will continuously create new opportunities with SK Telecom for innovation and other technologies related to the next generation LTE and 5G networks.”

Meanwhile, SK Telecom is the chair company of the 5G forum, launched by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the Korea Association of University, Research Institute and Industry for the development of 5G.

Ericsson is also participating in around 150 industry forums, including those by global research institutes such as Metis, which stands for mobile and wireless communications enablers for the 2020 Information Society, a 5G and 5G Infrastructure Public-Private Partnership.

The two companies have been carrying out joint research to prepare for the 5th generation, by demonstrating the world’s highest Internet download rate of 5Gbps based on the wireless LTE network in the 15GHz bandwidth, ahead of signing the MOU on July 2.

5G networks are expected to be 1,000 times faster than existing LTE services.

BY KIM JUNG-YOON [kjy@joongang.co.kr]