SK Telecom today said it demonstrated 5G mobile network slicing technology with Ericsson at the company’s corporate R&D center in Bundang, Korea.
The two companies have created different virtual network slices optimized for super multi-view and Augmented Reality (AR) / Virtual Reality (VR) services; IoT services; and enterprise solutions, said SK Telecom in a statement.
They isolated and protected these virtual network slices from one another, resolving a challenge that can come up when multiple virtual networks share one physical network.
The 5G network slicing enables partitioning of a single physical network into multiple virtual mobile networks to offer support for different types of 5G services. By providing virtual networks optimized for services on an as-a-service basis, SK Telecom will benefit from network operational efficiency and reduced time-to-market for new 5G services.
“Network slicing is a key enabling technology for SK Telecom’s All-IT based 5G architecture, and the demonstration of network slicing technology is a significant step forward to achieve the world’s first commercialization / deployment of the 5G network system,” said Alex Jinsung Choi, chief technology officer at SK Telecom.
SK Telecom, a major 4G operator in Korea, has clocked KRW 17.164 trillion revenues in 2014. As of the end of June 2015, the company has over 17.9 million LTE and LTE-Advanced subscribers.
Ulf Ewaldsson, CTO of Ericsson, said that the success with the network slicing technology is critical to enable the network to be an innovation platform for new types of applications and thereby meet the future expectations.
