SK Telecom announced the introduction of a new Wi-Fi technology that it claims can deliver speed as fast as 5G technology. It has successfully demonstrated at a speed of up to 4.8 Gbps at SK Telecom’s Bundang Center.
SK Telecom is planning to deploy access points for the next generation Wi-Fi next year particularly in high traffic density areas. Users with the new chipset-based smartphones will be benefited from the new technology.
The technology has built on the IEEE 802.11ax standard, delivering a speed of up to 4.8 Gbps, which is nearly four times faster than the existing gigabit Wi-Fi service—1.3 Gbps, 802.11ac — currently prevailing among smartphones.
The technology uses four antennas to transmit data and uses 160 MHz bandwidth, twice wider than the gigabit Wi-Fi service, and operates in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrums.
Once the technology is commercially implemented, SK Telecom believe it will play a tremendous role in delivering sufficient wireless access in any dense traffic scenarios. It features the OFDMA, Multi-user MIMO as well as the Dynamic Sensitivity Control (DSC) technology that are designed to improve the efficiency of the network.
Given the 802.11ax chipsets already released in the market by global makers, the next generation Wi-Fi service is expected to be commercially available for smartphones next year. Smartphones equipped with the chipset theoretically deliver a speed of up to 1.2 Gbps in 80 MHz with two antennas.
Park Jin-hyo, SVP and Head of Network Technology R&D Center, SK Telecom
By introducing the technology for the next generation Wi-Fi that can deliver as fast as 5G technology, we at SK Telecom have successfully laid foundation to offer better mobile services.
