SK Telecom, Ericsson demonstrate programmable 5G infrastructure

SK Telecom and Ericsson have demonstrated the immense potential and flexibility for customisation of next generation 5G mobile communications infrastructure.

The new tech, Software-Defined Telecommunications Infrastructure (SDTI), was demonstrated last week at the 5G Playground, the company's 5G technology innovation centre located in Bundang, south of Seoul.

The tech is capable of powering ultra-mini servers for individual broadcasting and blogs, as well as massive scale OTT services. Based on the concept of infrastructure slicing, the company said it allows for the dynamic composition and lifecycle management of infrastructure.

This will enable a wide range of 5G network capabilities, from ultra-mini servers for personalised services such as individual broadcasting to massive scale servers for mobile telecommunications and OTT services.

"We are pleased to jointly develop this SDTI technology based on Ericsson HDS 8000. Ericsson will continue to lead the 5G network technical innovation toward the 5G commercialisation in collaboration with SK Telecom," said Ulf Ewaldsson, Ericsson CTO.

"SDTI is an innovative technology that enhances network efficiency by flexibly constructing hardware components to satisfy the infrastructure performance requirements of diverse 5G services," said Park Jin-hyo, SVP and head of Network Technology R&D Center of SK Telecom.

"SK Telecom will continue to work closely with Ericsson to develop and verify innovative virtualization technologies to optimally support both new and existing services over the 5G network," he added.

SK said SDTI enhances the efficiency in network infrastructure upgrades as the disaggregated module of the server can be separately upgraded. It also offers strengthened security by physically separating infrastructure at the individual user level.

The telco also said the demonstration shows that their network slicing concept is best suited to support slicing counterparts in the virtualized network functions and network domain.

Building on this milestone, SK Telecom and Ericsson plan to jointly build an end-to-end 5G pilot system -- which consists of 5G device, radio, core network, and SDTI -- by the end of 2016, and verify the technical feasibility and performance of the system.

Source: ZDNet.co.kr