Choi Jin-sung, head of SK Telecom's ICT center, and Hossein Mooin, chief technology officer at Nokia, signed an MOU to jointly develop and demonstrate 5G technology by 2018 at Nokia’s headquarters in Espoo, Finland on Jan. 22 (local time).
Specifically, the two companies are aiming to develop gigabit-level data transmission technology and cloud-based virtualized base stations.
“We will accelerate efforts to develop and demonstrate 5G technology by 2018. We are also aiming at commercializing the technology by 2020. To test and demonstrate 5G technology, we are going to build a testbed for 5G network at SKT within the year,” said SKT and Nokia in a statement.
In particular, both companies are planning to lead the development of cmWave and mmWave 5G technologies that use a large number of frequencies in the over 60GHz MHz range to transmit and receive data, a core technology that transmits gigabit-level data.
The technology in question is being discussed as one of the main 5G technologies by partners of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), an organization to set up new mobile tech standard.