SK Telecom Boasts Standalone 5G ‘First,’ Readies Launch

There are many firsts to accomplish amid the advancement to 5G and SK Telecom has claimed a few, including another feat this week. The South Korean operator said it successfully initiated the “world’s first standalone (SA) 5G data session” using equipment from multiple vendors on a commercial 5G network. SK Telecom added New Radio (NR) software to its existing non-standalone (NSA) 5G base stations and achieved interoperability between equipment from Ericsson and Samsung. The SA 5G data call occurred on Jan. 16 in Busan, the second largest city in South Korea, and the operator also said it applied network slicing and mobile edge computing (MEC) to its SA 5G network.