South Korea’s SK Telecom, which is the country’s most widely used mobile carrier, on Thursday revealed that it would be the world’s first operator of a 5G network.
This was after it opened the doors of the 5G Playground facility which is dedicated to researching the nascent service.
5G is the next significant update to wireless Internet connectivity after 4G LTE and SK has reportedly demonstrated speeds of up to 19.1 gigabits per second, nearly 1,000 times faster than the 25 megabits-per-second in which 4G LTE users in South Korea currently get.
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“SKT will spare no efforts to achieve the world’s first commercialisation of the 5G network,” CEO Choi Jin-sung said at the opening of the Playground.
The centre was launched in conjunction with tech giants Samsung Electronics, Nokia, Intel, telco infrastructure provider Ericsson and electronics firm Rhode & Schwartz.
SK Telecom said it would have a test network running by 2017, which is ahead of a globally standardized, commercially usable network by 2020.