South Korea’s KT Corp has announced the completion of a world-first ‘5G low latency multi-radio access technology’ test in a 5G commercial network in collaboration with Belgian tech company Tessares. The 5G multi-radio access technology, which the 3GPP has named ATSSS (Access Traffic Steering, Switch and Splitting), is one of the 5G differentiators standardised in the 3GPP Release-16 5G System Architecture Standard (3GPP TS 23.501). ATSSS was defined in collaboration with KT, Apple, Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Cisco, and is based on Multi-Path TCP technology. ATSSS reduces the initial session setup time to achieve 5G ultra-low latency in a multi-radio context, resulting in a setup delay of less than half compared to previous approaches. KT and Tessares have jointly led the international standardisation of this initial delay reduction technique through the IETF TCP Working Group.
KT launched its 5G network for enterprise users in December 2018 ahead of a wider consumer launch in April 2019, and by August it was operating 35,415 5G base stations across major cities, according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database. Low-latency multi-radio access network technology is being applied to improve data speed and service quality for consumers as well as for KT’s enterprise-dedicated 5G service, which is expected to greatly contribute to the activation of delay-sensitive enterprise applications such as 5G smart office and smart factories.
Sun-woo Lee, Senior Vice President, KT Infra R&D Laboratory, said of the latest ATSSS test: ‘The success of this low latency test will allow customers to take advantage of existing LTE and Wi-Fi networks, as well as 5G, to enable wireless services at higher speed and quality.’ Tessares CEO Denis Periquet added: ‘We are convinced that mobile Internet usage requires an efficient combination of all existing network assets such as Wi-Fi, LTE and 5G.’