OREANDA-NEWS. SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) today announced that it signed a MOU with Ericsson, a world leader in communications technology and services, at headquarters of Ericsson in Stockholm, Sweden for joint research for 5G-related technologies.

In the MOU, SK Telecom and Ericsson agreed to cooperate in studying and developing core technologies that hold high potential to become standards of the next generation network with the aim of demonstrating 5G at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics.

The two companies first selected technologies considered essential for evolution to 5G which include next generation small cell, ultra-wideband, low latency technology that could be used for remote driving, FDD/TDD convergence technology, gigabyte-level data transmission technology and etc.

Low latency technology refers to a technology to bring down data transmission latency to 1ms(ms: 1/1000 sec). (Above 10ms with the current LTE/LTE-Advanced) 

Also, SK Telecom and Ericson agreed to continue to work together if there are additional technologies found necessary for the next generation network.

Park Jin-hyo, Senior Vice President and Head of Network Technology R&D Center at SK Telecom, said SK Telecom is pleased to work with Ericsson to lead 5G network technology. We will continue to lead development of technologies for the era of the next generation network.

Thomas Norn, Vice President and Head of Product Area Radio, Ericsson says: Korea is clearly leading in the uptake of LTE, in terms of technology and subscriber uptake, and SK Telecom is the largest mobile carrier in their market. They are early drivers of technology and we see them as an important partner in defining new opportunities, innovations and requirements for the continued evolution of LTE and towards 5G.

Meanwhile, SK Telecom is taking the lead in development of 5G technologies, chairing '5G Forum', established by Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and industry-academia partnership to develop 5G.

Ericsson leads or is active in approximately 150 industry fora, standardization bodies and global research activities such as METIS and 5G-PPP. Ericsson is one of the key players in defining the next generation of network technologies all the way from research through standardization to commercialization.

Even before signing the MOU, the two companies had closely worked together preparing for the era of 5G, for example, by demonstrating 5Gbps, the world's fastest LTE-based network speed in the 15GHz bandwidth on July 2.