SK Telecom, one of the Korean mobile operators and a leading player in 4G / LTE, has demonstrated the Elastic Cell, a key 5G technology, on July 21 – in association with Ericsson.

The telecom operator termed this as a break through initiative in the development of 5G technology which will become a reality in 2020.

The company said elastic cell (Flexible Cell) enables multiple cells near the handset to cooperate for every transmission creating a user-centric environment, compared to the current cell-centric one where each handset communicates with only one specific cell.

Elastic Cell can ensure more seamless data transmission by preventing possible quality degradation that can occur when the handset moves across cell boundaries, said SK Telecom.

As per the demonstration, the technology can improve data transfer rate by up to 50 percent at the cell boundary areas compared to the existing LTE network.

SK Telecom is aiming to commercialize Elastic Cell by 2016. Elastic Cell will enable SK Telecom to offer 1Gbps data throughput anywhere.

Park Jin-hyo, senior vice president and Head of Network Technology R&D Center at SK Telecom, said: “SK Telecom, together with Ericsson, succeeded in the world’s first demonstration of Elastic Cell which is expected to become a prerequisite for the next generation network.”