Ericsson Firms Up 5G Standing in Korea

Ericsson secured its place as a key 5G network equipment supplier in South Korea after one of the country’s three mobile operators, KT, awarded a commercial 5G contract to the Sweden-based vendor. KT had already chosen Ericsson as well as Nokia and Samsung Electronics as its 5G equipment partners, and Ericsson hailed the signing of the initial commercial contract as an important step towards the rollout of live mobile 5G services. The vendor said it is providing 3GPP standards-based 5G new radio (NR) hardware and software to cover KT’s 3.5 GHz non-standalone (NSA) network. KT and rivals LG UPlus and SK Telecom (SKT) were among the first operators in the world to launch commercial 5G networks in December 2018, initially targeting enterprise customers. They now plan to launch 5G services nationwide starting in April, maintaining a close collaboration on the timing of their respective network rollouts as the first 5G smartphones come onto the market from Samsung and LG.