Archive

Archive

Media

5G: Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom expand their team

  • The market-leaders of Korea and Germany team up with technology leaders and operators around the globe
  • The alliance will help identify and resolve key standards issues early and bring 5G to market sooner
  • DT and SK Telecom will deploy the world’s first transcontinental 5G trial network

5G development and standardization have come full circle. Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) team up with several technology leaders and operators from USA, Asia and Europe to align for the coming worldwide communications standard and to enable a faster deployment.

“We are collaborating with a good mix of industry participants including AT&T, Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Samsung to make the vision of a common worldwide standard come true right in time. From our point of view, the next release of the official 3GPP specifications are set to form the basis of 5G,” says Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, CTO Deutsche Telekom AG.

“5G is making its way forward much faster than initially expected. For 5G to be successful, early harmonization and standardization are essential. SK Telecom and DT started initial collaboration on 5G technologies and are now expanding the scope with a larger group of relevant stakeholders to promote early harmonization and expansion of the 5G ecosystem. We strongly believe that this will serve as a foundation for future standardization activities,” said Alex Jinsung Choi, CTO and Head of Corporate R&D Center, SK Telecom.

Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom announced at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that they entered into a strategic business partnership agreement to collaborate in the fields of services, Internet of Things (IoT) and related R&D areas like 5G. Teaming up with more technology leaders around the globe now will help identify and resolve key standards issues early and bring 5G to market sooner. When the industry completes a technology standard, the roll-out experience is smoother which helps businesses and consumers start using 5G technology even faster. That will help the market-leaders of Korea and Germany to deliver new value to customers more quickly.

DT and SK Telecom will deploy the world’s first transcontinental 5G trial network. The network’s architecture in South Korea and Germany will be based on key 5G technologies such as Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), software-defined infrastructure (SDI), distributed cloud and network slicing. The principal aim is to enable global reach for advanced 5G use cases by optimizing user roaming experiences.

About Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with more than 156 million mobile customers, 29 million fixed-network lines and around 18 million broadband lines (as of December 31, 2015). The Group provides fixed-network/broadband, mobile communications, Internet, and Internet-based TV products and services for consumers, and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in more than 50 countries and has around 225,200 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 69.2 billion in the 2015 financial year – around 64 percent of it outside Germany.

About SK Telecom
SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM, KSE: 017670), established in 1984, is Korea’s largest telecommunications company with more than 29.15 million mobile subscribers, accounting for around 50% of the market. The company reached KRW 17.137 trillion in revenue in 2015. As the world’s first company to commercialize CDMA, CDMA 2000 1x, CDMA EV-DO and HSDPA networks, SK Telecom launched the nation’s first LTE service in July 2011. SK Telecom also became the world’s first mobile carrier to commercialize 150Mbps LTE-Advanced in June 2013 and 225Mbps LTE-Advanced in June 2014 through Carrier Aggregation(CA). In line with its efforts to swiftly move towards the next-generation mobile network system, or 5G, it successfully commercialized 300Mbps tri-band LTE-A CA in December 2014 and launched LTE-Advanced Pro in June 2016. As of the end of June 2016, the company has over 20.03 million LTE and LTE-Advanced subscribers. Based on its strength in network operations business, SK Telecom is seeking new growth engines through three innovative platforms namely Lifestyle Enhancement Platform, Advanced Media Platform and IoT Service Platform.
For more information, please visit www.sktelecom.com/en or email to skt_press@sk.com.

FAQ