World’s First 5G Call
Korea-based KT and US-based Verizon has succeeded in testing the world’s first live hologram international call based on their 5G networks, for which the two companies has collaborated for the past two years. The two companies also have agreed to expand bilateral partnership for commercialization of 5G services that users can feel their daily lives.
Verizon’s CEO Lowell McAdam and KT’s CEO Hwang Chang-gyu met at KT headquarters in Seoul on April 3 to discuss the companies’ 5G joint efforts and future work. This event marked an important milestone on the road to launching global 5G services. Additionally, multiple uses of KT’s GiGA Genie will validate the potential for artificial intelligence devices emerging in the consumer goods market.
At the CEO conference in January 2016, the KT and Verizon CEOs expressed mutual interest in collaborating on infrastructure evolution (including 5G) and technology development. They have been working together ever since, producing common 5G specifications and interacting on multiple levels in the field of SDN and NFV. In the latest meeting, KT offered to expand the scope of the current collaboration to include a variety of 5G use cases in order to accelerate the start of the 5G era.
KT has been working aggressively to implement 5G infrastructures and preparing 5G trial services for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games and commercial services in 2019. The trial network has been deployed and is being tested mainly in downtown Seoul and the Olympics venues in PyeongChang. Verizon, which is the largest U.S. wireless communications providers, began testing its own service in December last year, and is targeting customer trials within the first half of this year in 11 strategic U.S. markets in New Jersey, Michigan, Georgia, California, Washington D.C., etc.
While KT and Verizon each has its own 5G deployment plan, the two companies have partnered on many aspects of 5G during the past two years and are strategically aligned on the specifications for early 5G commercialization. These joint efforts included establishing the specification for 5G radio access technology for both devices and base station equipment. They have completed specifications for the 5G system technology of RAN, they will turn to the software specification that will help to virtualize and transform core system into software-defined infrastructure
As a result of the partnership, the two companies have successfully demonstrated the world premiere of a live hologram video call over a globally interconnected network - connecting KT’s 5G trial network in Gwanghwamun, Seoul and Verizon’s 5G trial network in New Jersey, US. Both 5G trial networks were deployed over 28GHz spectrum, adoption of which has already been proposed and discussed as a viable option in 3GPP last month. It is the world’s first successful true end-to-end 5G network interworking, signaling that the 5G era is right around corner.
In this demonstration, KT has not only shown that both 5G networks were interoperable, but also that a hologram video call could be conducted with high quality using ordinary devices like tablets people use every day. The successful demonstration proves that given the right connection 5G is available to many devices already in the market. Furthermore, the trial shows that global 5G can enable various future services with high data rate, massive traffic volume, and low latency on worldwide scale.
Additionally, both companies were able to significantly reduce the configuration time needed to set up an international dedicated line from several days down to around 10 minutes. The labor-intensive and time-consuming job could be saved by software based automation. This first global interconnection of orchestrators between two major operators which control virtual infrastructure resources has proven that SDI (Software Defined Infrastructure) is already a feasible solution and an important means for transforming the global business landscape. Both companies defined and implemented the specification of interconnection for their orchestrators and plan to jointly propose this specification as an international standard and to share it with the global ecosystem. According to market research institute SDxCentral, the related market size is expected to reach US$105 billion in 2020.
Both Verizon and KT expect the 5G industry to grow fast and exponentially over the next few years, inevitably impacting other industries. According to a global market research institute, IHS, 5G will have an economic effect worth US$12.3 trillion in 2035, while the 5G Forum in Korea estimates the market size to leapfrog from US$862 million in 2020 to US$$36.7 billion in 2026, spearheaded mostly by the Korean market. These bold forecasts are not unrealistic.
Lowell McAdam said, “The collaboration under the current partnership of Verizon and KT has been very productive as shown by the demos we have seen today. We will continue to work together to lead the global 5G business by developing innovative technologies and services.”
Hwang Chang-gyu remarked, “Neither one company nor one country alone can commercialize 5G by itself, let alone by 2019. Thus, collaboration, like what we have with Verizon, is all the more important in order to establish the global 5G mobile ecosystem.” He also added, “We will usher in a new era of 5G, where disruptive technologies and services will fundamentally exceed user experience rather than simply enhance the user experience.”