South Korea’s largest cellco by subscribers, SK Telecom, and Finnish vendor Nokia Networks have demonstrated the latter’s cmWave technology, and in doing so claim to have set ‘a new milestone that adds momentum to the standardization of 5G technologies’. As part of a joint 5G trial in South Korea the duo achieved a transmission speed of 19.1Gbps over the air using 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), 8×8 Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) transmission and 400MHz of bandwidth.
Commenting on the development, Alex Jinsung Choi, SK Telecom’s chief technology officer, said: ‘With the world’s first demonstration of the cmWave technology, we have reached a significant milestone towards realizing 5G. The 19.1Gbps transmission speed we achieved almost meets one of the key capabilities of 5G defined by the ITU-R. SK Telecom will continue to work closely with Nokia Networks to maintain this momentum towards creating a new era of communications.’