Moving Towards 5G Standalone Services
SK Telecom announced on July 1 that it has succeeded in data communication using the 5G system by linking core equipment and the 5G standalone (SA) packet exchanger, which is based on the exclusive 5G standard, with Samsung Electronics for the first time in Korea.
The current 5G network is not a purely 5G network as it shares some equipment with a 4G LTE network. In the early stage of 5G commercialization, the use of a non-standalone (NSA) 5G network is normal because it takes much time, cost and resources to set up a standalone (SA) 5G network.
The new 5G SA network is three times more efficient than the existing 5G NSA network. It can efficiently control large-scale traffic and provide optimal communication performance for next-generation services such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), autonomous driving, smart factory, and smart farm.
The newly succeeded 5G SA interworking is a procedure of checking whether data is normally transmitted and received in the same environment as the actual customer service. The two companies successfully confirmed the structural integrity of the 5G SA core network. The 5G SA test included 5G core technologies such as network slicing and functional modularization.