The star of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, currently taking place at the BEXCO convention center in Busan, has turned out to be 5G technologies.

5G stands for "fifth generation mobile networks." Experts say that the speed of 5G enables users to download a complete, high-resolution movie in one second. With 5G, people can even create and use holograms on their portable devices, as seen in science fiction films like “Star Wars.”

President Park Geun-hye said during the opening ceremony of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference that, “To lead the hyper-connected digital revolution, Korea aims to establish a gigabyte Internet network by 2017 and commercialize the world’s first 5G mobile network services by 2020.”



At the ongoing ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, Samsung, LG Electronics, SK Telecom and KT all showcased their 5G-related technologies.

Prior to the ITU conference, Samsung announced on October 15 that it had successfully demonstrated its 5G mobile network inside an express bus travelling faster than 100 kilometers per hour. The firm said that it succeeded in transmitting data at a speed of 1.2 gigabytes per second. When the bus stopped, the speed rose to as high as 7.5 gigabytes per second. This technology, which sends data at a speed of 980 megabytes per second on average, is 30 times faster than the current 4G LTE mobile networks.

Kim Chang Yong, head of the DMC R&D Center at Samsung Electronics, said, “Expectations about 5G mobile communications are rising thanks to the wide use of smartphones, cloud services, smart home technology and the 'Internet of Things' (IoT).”



SK Telecom unveiled its 5G technology at the World IT Show 2014. The firm demonstrated a 5G technology that can send data at speeds of up to 3.7 gigabytes per second, 48 times faster than existing 4G LTE networks. This technology enables users to download about 100 UHD movies at the same time.

SK Telecom, which introduced its 5G White Paper during the 5G Global Summit, predicts that 5G-related multimedia services, such as holograms, augmented reality, virtual reality and hyper-connected IoT services that connect various smart devices and cars based on large mobile network, will all soon be commercialized.

Park Jinhyo, head of the Network Technology R&D Center at SK Telecom, said, “We are glad to publish this 5G White Paper. The report will present a future direction for 5G-related research and discussion.”

By Jeon Han, Yoon Sojung
Korea.net Staff Writers
hanjeon@korea.kr