SK Telecom (SKT) announced on September 6 that it has presented its 6G future network evolution direction at the Innovative Optical & Wireless Network (IOWN) Global Forum, a global next-generation communications standards council.
SK Telecom participated in the 6th regular member meeting of the IOWN Global Forum in Munich, Germany, from September 5 to 7, and presented the SKT 6G White Paper on 6G core requirements and evolution direction, as well as the demonstration results of low-power/high-capacity next-generation mobile fronthaul technology in preparation for 6G fixed-line networks.
The IOWN Global Forum was established in January 2020 for the purpose of research and development and standardization of next-generation communication technologies centered on 6G fixed-line networks and data centers, with 125 big-tech companies and research institutes from around the world, including NTT, Sony, Intel, and Microsoft.
At the plenary session of the IOWN Global Forum, SKT introduced the main contents of the 6G white paper released in August, and presented the core requirements and evolution of 6G, as well as the direction of IOWN's cooperation in the 6G standardization process, which received a lot of attention from the attendees.
SKT also announced the results of its development and verification of low-power/high-capacity next-generation mobile fronthaul technology in preparation for 5G evolution and 6G fixed networks. These results were proposed by SKT at the IOWN Global Forum workshop in Paris in February and validated in collaboration with Nokia/HFR.
SKT disclosed that the verification resulted in a reduction of power consumption by one-third compared to existing 5G fronthaul technology, and said it will also verify next-generation mobile fronthaul technology in conjunction with Open RAN technology in the future.
At the IOWN conference held in Osaka in April, SKT also conducted various activities, including contributing to and presenting 6G-related technology demonstration cases (progress in demonstrating interworking between SDN platforms and next-generation open optical transmission equipment) and the contents of the 6G white paper and energy saving white paper jointly developed with NTT DOCOMO.
In addition to IOWN, SKT is active in several global standardization organizations and forums, including the O-RAN Alliance, Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN), 3GPP, and ITU. In particular, SKT is the only Korean telecom operator to participate in the NGMN, publishing a 6G technology white paper and co-chairing the Requirements Study Group (RS-01) under nGRG, the 6G research group of the O-RAN Alliance, to create an early 6G ecosystem.
