Ericsson has partnered with leading telecommunications operators SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom to deploy the world's first transcontinental 5G trial network. Ericsson will be the sole infrastructure supplier for the partnership.
The three companies will deploy a trial network in South Korea and Germany that uses key 5G Ready core such as Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), software-defined infrastructure (SDI), distributed cloud and network slicing. The principal aim is to enable global reach for advanced 5G use cases by optimizing user roaming experiences. In addition, the partners will collaborate on 5G ecosystem development, global marketing promotions and potential standardization activities.
Ericsson and SK Telecom conducted a successful demonstration of network slicing technology in October 2015, while SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom signed a strategic partnership at MWC 2016 in Spain.
Alex Jinsung Choi, CTO & Head of Corporate R&D Center, SK Telecom
Through this three-party collaboration, we will be able to better understand and build a 5G system that can provide consistent and enhanced user experience across the globe.
Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, CTO, Deutsche Telekom
Many of the customer scenarios envisaged for the 5G era will require excellent quality of service globally. From our point of view, network slicing roaming will be a key enabler to support customers' international operations with an optimized experience.
