[THE INVESTOR] Korea’s leading network operator SK Telecom said June 29 that the company and network equipment firm Ericsson have demonstrated a network infrastructure platform, dubbed software-define telecommunications infrastructure, in Korea for the first time in the world.

The SDTI platform allows mobile network infrastructure components, including CPUs, memory chips and storage devices, to be disaggregated and recomposed together to provide the optimal level of infrastructure scale for various 5G services, called the network slicing technology, according to the network operator.

For example, a network operator can simply have network transmitters tailored for a different range of services, such as a high quality phone call or video streaming, by upgrading software instead of installing new network equipment for new services.

“SDTI is an innovative technology that enhances network efficiency by flexibly constructing hardware components to satisfy the infrastructure performance requirements of diverse 5G services,” said Park Jin-hyo, the head of SKT’s network technology R&D center.

“SK Telecom will continue to work closely with Ericsson to develop and verify innovative virtualization technologies to optimally support both new and existing services over the 5G network,” he added.

“We are pleased to jointly develop this SDTI technology based on Ericsson HDS 8000. Ericsson will continue to lead the 5G network technical innovation toward the 5G commercialization in collaboration with SK Telecom,” said Ulf Ewaldsson, chief technology officer of Ericsson.

SKT and Ericsson plan to jointly build end-to-end 5G pilot system -- which consists of 5G device, radio, core network, and SDTI -- by the end of 2016, and verify the technical feasibility and performance of the 5G system.

By Park Yuna (yunapark@heraldcorp.com)