SK Telecom’s ‘Network Virtualization Technology’ is recognized worldwide. SK Telecom (CEO Park Jeong-ho) announced on May 24th that it won two gold medals with its ‘T-MANO’ platform at the ‘Network Virtualization Awards’ held in Madrid,Spain on May 23rd.
The award categories were ‘Best Virtualization Solution’ and ‘Most Successful Commercialization’. The ‘Network Virtualization Awards' is jointly organized by the global ICT research institutes ‘Knew 365’ and ‘Informa’. Organizers select companies that have a high level of technology or commercialization speed of virtualization technology and award them in 10 different categories.
Thirty-nine companies from around the world were nominated for this year’s awards. SK Telecom and Verizon were the only telecommunication companies.
‘Network Virtualization’ is technology that replaces physical equipment for mobile communication with general purpose IT equipment. It implements various communication functions in cloud and software. If new software is installed in virtualization equipment, communication function can be upgraded without large-scale facility construction.
In the past, it was necessary to have a dedicated device such as ‘MP3 player’ to listen to digital music, but now it is possible with a smartphone app (software).
The ‘T-MANO’ is a platform for integrated management of virtualized equipment and software that provides flexibility in handling local voice and data traffic through software tuning and increases efficiency of operation.
SK Telecom developed the ‘T-MANO’ and applied it to LTE commercial network last July. It will be applied to the 5G network as well.
“This award reaffirmed SK Telecom’s advanced network technology. As virtualization technology becomes more important in the 5G era, we will build the world’s highest level virtualization environment and lead the 5G commercialization,” said Park Jin-hyo, director of the ICT Technology Center at SK Telecom