SOUTH KOREAN COMPANIES Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom have announced a major new partnership in developing 5G (fifth generation) mobile communications technology.
SK Telecom said yesterday that the two companies had signed an MOU (memorandum of understanding) to “start joint research on 5G network technology and service development.”
5G is widely conceived to be a set of telecommunication technologies and services that support 1,000 time more data capacity as LTE [4G] at speeds higher than 1Gbps per user over a densely-connected network.
At the World IT Show in Busan, South Korea, yesterday, the companies demonstrated an unbelievable speed-test of 3.7 Gbps.
To put that in context – a high quality hour-long TV episode is around 1 GB in size.
So in a few years time you could, theoretically, download the first episode of Season 10 of Game of Thrones, in 2.16 seconds, on your mobile.
With that level of speed, however, SK Telecom is looking beyond your next Tyrion Lannister fix.
In a white paper published today, the company touts “life-saving remote control robots” and automatic cars as real-world uses for 5G technology.
For instance, remote rescue robot control service will be possible…
Robots are deployed in dangerous construction sites to replace human enabling wireless remote control as well as prompt response to a change in the environment based on real-time high resolution images and information.
According to SK Telecom’s newly-announced plans, 5G will enable “autonomous driving based on image recognition and vehicle-to-vehicle/vehicle-to-infrastructure communication.”
This week’s developments mean a 5G race has well and truly begun, with Japanese mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo having already announced plans to begin R & D on the next generation of wireless communication.
The European Commission this summer signed an agreement with South Korea to launch a joint research program into 5G by 2017.
It’s expected that the first commercial 5G networks will be rolled out by 2020, but with this week’s announcements, you might find streaming ultra high-definition movies or being rescued by a robot, sooner rather than later.
Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly used 3.7 GBps as the basis for a calculation, instead of 3.7gbps. It has been corrected.
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