Since March 2015, when KT Chairman Hwang Chang-gyu first mentioned 5G, or the fifth-generation network, the South Korean mobile carrier has been making efforts to prepare for the establishment of the world’s first 5G network services.

The company’s efforts are close to bearing fruit at the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics set to take place in Gangwon Province in February.

Taking advantage of being an official telecom partner for the PyeongChang Olympics, KT has been working to showcase the world’s first 5G services to athletes and audiences of the Olympic Games as well as viewers across the globe. 

For the past five months, KT has worked to complete a network that will enable pilot services. It has also conducted a number of connectivity examinations and field tests for stabilized performances of what the company wants to show.

KT has so far unveiled five pilot services for the upcoming international sports event. They are Sync View, 360-degree Live VR, Omni-View, Hologram Performance and Hologram Live.

Sync View will use a live broadcast service of first-person synchronous view to show sports from players’ point of view, allowing viewers to feel part of the action.

The 360-degree Live VR service is based on live virtual reality technology and will enable viewers to experience the games in a virtual reality environment.

Omni View, a live broadcast service of selected multi-objective view, will provide biometric data of players on the screen and will allow viewers to choose the broadcast angle they want to view from.

KT is also preparing for on-stage holographic performances, while also developing video call technology using 3-D holograms.

The technologies used in KT’s pilot services, so-called “PyeongChang 5G specifications,” were adopted as temporary standards by Korea’s Telecommunications Technology Association in June. They include core 5G technologies, such as Massive MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) and Beamforming that operate on the 28-gigahertz millimeter-wave spectrum.

Last November, KT publicized the 5G specification guidelines on its website. The guide was made in partnership with global equipment makers and chipmakers including Samsung, Nokia, Ericsson, Intel and Qualcomm, in the hopes of inviting small firms to join the 5G network equipment business.

With Samsung, KT built a 5G-enabled device and succeeded in transmitting data from the device to the core network equipment as the industry’s first last October, according to the company. 

In the next few years leading to 2020 when the International Telecommunication Union aims to announce a final set of 5G standards, the PyeongChang 5G standards are expected to be referred to and used for discussion in the telecom industry and academia.

According to the ITU, a 5G network must promise download speeds of up to 20 billions of bits per second. The network should support at least 1 million connected devices per square kilometer with a response time of less than 0.001 second and also support mobile devices moving at up to 500 kilometers per hour. 

Based on the 5G network, KT Chairman Hwang is going one step further than others, suggesting a new level of network, dubbed an “intelligent network.”

At a lecture to students of Harvard Business School last September, Hwang said, “KT’s pursuit of 5G technologies will create a society going beyond mobile based on an intelligent network.”

For the next two years stating from March, KT will run the third 5G Forum, a domestic organization conducting research and development of 5G technologies in terms of standardization. Oh Seong-mok, president of network division at KT, was appointed chair of the forum. 

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