South Korean mobile network operator (MNO) KT Corp is in the final stages of 5G trial infrastructure tests in the city of PyeongChang. In a press release Swedish vendor Ericsson announced the latest development, noting that at a meeting last month, KT and its partners had agreed on the next steps needed to deploy and optimise the trial 5G network over the course of 2017, including plans for joint technology development. Additionally, it was confirmed that KT and Ericsson have conducted tests along the Incheon Airport Railway – a new high speed rail line linking the capital of Seoul with Incheon International Airport – with these including a handover between 5G base stations along the railway and a peak throughput of up to 4Gbps.
Looking ahead, Ericsson and KT have agreed to jointly develop beamforming/beam tracking technology and 5G-LTE inter-working technology to optimise capacity and coverage with robust performance. Infrastructure in the 28GHz trial 5G trial network will reportedly include virtual radio access network (vRAN) and virtualised core (5G core system) and KT is said to already be in the process of conducting interoperability tests based on the PyeongChang 5G SIG specification.