SK Telecom claims world’s first standalone 5G data session

S K Telecom claims that, earlier today, it staged the world’s first standalone (SA) 5G data session on its multi-vendor commercial 5G network. SK Telecom said that it plans to launch the world’s first 5G SA service in the first half of this year. The standalone 5G data call took place on January 16, 2020 in Busan, the second largest city in Korea, using SK Telecom’s commercial 5G network deployed in that region. To achieve this, the company applied standalone New Radio (NR) software to its existing non-standalone (NSA) 5G base stations, and completed multi-vendor interoperability between network equipment of Ericsson and Samsung. SK Telecom has also applied key 5G technologies such as network slicing and mobile edge computing (MEC) to its standalone 5G network. Network slicing is being highlighted as an essential technology for providing optimal support for different types of 5G services by partitioning a single physical network into multiple virtual mobile networks.