Experts tout Korea’s 5G speed, coverage at SKT seminar

Global experts from around the world and industry officials agreed on supremacy of South Korea’s 5G network technologies at an online seminar hosted by SK Telecom on Wednesday.

“Korea’s 5G achievements are special for the world,” said Alex Choi, vice president of Deutsche Telekom, during the seminar. “There are few countries that have 5G speed on 3.5 gigahertz as fast as Korea and coverage as wide as Korea.”

Ross O’Brien, editor of MIT Tech Review, touted Korea’s 5G leadership and its original value.

“Korea offers satisfying 5G speed and coverage with the introduction of 3.5GHz,” he said.

Three SKT executives, Park Jong-kwan, head of 5G technologies, Ryu Jung-hwan, head of 5G infrastructure and Lee Kang-won, head of 5G cloud, introduced the mobile carrier’s progress in development of 5G technologies and further plans.

“SKT is making various efforts to upgrade current 5G network quality on 3.5GHz, such as the dual connectivity technology that combines the current non-standalone 5G with LTE,” Park said.

“The company is preparing to provide standalone 5G on 28GHz for business-to-business services, considering the characteristics of the frequency,” Ryu said.

The 28GHz frequency’s coverage would reach 10 to 15 percent of that of 3.5GHz, which is considered more useful for B2B services, he said.

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)