On Sunday, 4th February 2018 (US time), Verizon Chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam and KT chairman and CEO Chang-Gyu Hwang conducted the unprecedented pre-commercial 5G video call using two of Samsung’s fully functioning prototype devices, the 5G Tablets. The call was conducted between Minneapolis, USA, and Seoul, Korea, during a sponsored sports event, and demonstrated Samsung’s 5G solutions, featuring Samsung 5G end-to-end (E2E) solutions in each location.
Hong-beom Jeon, Executive Vice President, Head of Infra laboratory, KT, has said, “It brings great pleasure to see where all the contributions we have been making on 5G specifications are leading us. The fact that 5G is no longer a dream owes its debt to the collaborations we have carried out with operators like Verizon and vendors like Samsung. Our efforts have enabled some of the most demanding tasks to come to fruition.”
For his part, Ed Chan, Senior Vice President, and Chief Technology Architect, Verizon, has said, “By working closely with industry leaders like KT and Samsung, we are finally making 5G a reality. Seeing Samsung’s end-to-end 5G solutions in action, including a working Samsung prototype 5G tablet, underscores how important our collaborative relationship has been in helping accelerate the availability of commercial 5G mobility for customers. As we say at Verizon, ‘we don’t wait for the future, we build it.’ We are glad to be working with like-minded partners to build the 5G future globally.”
The third comment on this event comes from Woojune Kim, Senior Vice President and Head of North American Business, Samsung Electronics, who has said, “We have been working closely with KT and Verizon to demonstrate mobile 5G use cases at two prestigious global events. This demonstration conducted today with KT and Verizon represents a huge milestone for us, showing our contribution to the development of early 5G global specifications and 3GPP NR (New Radio), and spotlighting the next-generation Samsung technologies that let operators implement robust new services.”
The network infrastructure supplied by Samsung to demonstrate the 5G development at the event included 28GHz 5G access units, 5G home routers(CPEs), virtualized RAN, the virtualized core network, and the prototype 5G device. Samsung has developed the first commercial ASIC-based 5G modems and mm-Wave RFICs using in-house assets and technologies which have enabled them to bring to market one of the smallest 5G radio base stations and 5G home routers (CPEs).
So far as the prototype device is concerned, the handheld Samsung’s 5G tablet can run on both multi-gigabit per second speeds via 5G networks and the latest 4G LTE network speed. It also supports data session handovers between 4G LTE and 5G and demonstrates advancements in chipset and antenna technology necessary to support future commercial 5G devices.
