SK Telecom plans to establish a communication environment with Bridge Alliance, which is the largest telecommunication business in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, where 5G service can be easily linked to foreign countries like roaming.
Bridge Alliance’s (Total 900 million subscribers) 34 telecommunication member companies such as SKT (Korea), Singtel (Singapore), Optus (Australia), AIS (Thailand), Globe (Philippines), STC (Middle East), Airtel (India, Africa) are investing in 5G MEC (Mobile Edge Computing) which is considered as core infrastructure.
5G MEC is a 5G technology that provides ultra-low latency communication and private data protection function by locating small data centers at base stations close to users (B2C, B2B).
SK Telecom has been working hard to establish '5G MEC Hub' through TF activities within Bridge Alliance since last year. The first result came from cooperation with Singapore's No. 1 telecommunications company, Singtel.
The two companies succeeded in running the 5G cloud game "World of Warship" simultaneously on the SKT 5G MEC platform and the Singtel 5G MEC platform through 5G MEC Hub, which is a server in Asia. Wargaming, a game developer, also participated in the verification process.
SK Telecom is leading 5G MEC cooperation within Bridge Alliance based on its experience of releasing 5G edge cloud services for the first time in Korea with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world's largest cloud company, in December last year.
This year, it will also implement a function to freely upload and download 5G service apps on the 5G MEC hub in partnership with Australian telecommunication company Optus and Thai telecommunication company AIS.
Through this, companies that release 5G services will be able to easily use 5G MEC by global carriers through 5G MEC Hub operated by Bridge Alliance.
Currently, in order to use 5G MEC, each telecommunication company has to sign an individual contract, so it is difficult to spread the service.
Lee Dong-ki in charge of SK Telecom's 5GX MEC Product, said, "Telecommunication companies around the world are trying to establish 5G MEC and link it with each other to expand 5G MEC services."
Ong Geok Chwee, CEO of Bridge Alliance, said, "Starting in Asia, we are building an ecosystem that connects 5G MEC hubs and edge clouds from each country. A world where companies and developers around the world use high-performance, ultra-low-latency 5G MEC infrastructure will be opened."
