06 November 2019

South Korea’s SK Telecom has claimed a first – winning the race to successfully test and use a 5G standalone (SA) terminal, base station and network core earlier this summer.

The successful data transmission on a pure 5G network was initiated with base stations and core equipment from Ericsson and terminals from Qualcomm, the operator said.

SK Telecom operates on the non-standalone (NSA) core, which means the operator relies on a 4G LTE network core to support both generations of cellular technology.

The firm said it planned to commercialise its 5G SA infrastructure in the first half of next year, along with other new capabilities such as network slicing and mobile edge computing (MEC). 

Although SK Telecom is not the only operator moving hastily toward a 5G SA core, it is among the earliest and most advanced so far.

Over the last few months, T-Mobile US completed a 5G SA data session using equipment from multiple vendors.

Ericsson also readied 5G new radio software operators will need to deploy a pure 5G network, while the Swedish giant and Qualcomm initiated a 5G SA data connection test.

Elsewhere, Nokia, Huawei and ZTE, and other vendors and operators are also completing trials and moving toward 5G SA deployments.