The Samsung 5G common core supports 5G SA, 5G NSA and 4G simultaneously
Samsung Electronics and KT Corporation (KT) said that they have deployed Korea’s first 5G standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) common core in KT’s commercial network. By supporting 5G SA, 5G NSA and 4G simultaneously, Samsung’s 5G common core will facilitate a smoother evolution to 5G SA and simplify data packet flows.
Samsung Electronics’ Senior Vice President and Head of Global Technology Service, Networks Business Taiyeon Kim called the company’s 5G common core solution “powerful” and said that it “brings unprecedented services closer to users and will unlock a new generation of enterprise applications.”
“This collaboration with KT is a significant milestone in advancing towards the commercialization of nationwide 5G SA networks in Korea,” added Kim.
KT’s commercial SA network will launch when 5G SA-capable devices become available in the market. Once that happens, Samsung’s common core will run in KT’s Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) telecom centers across eight major Korean cities.
When KT launched 5G commercial services in NSA mode last April, it utilized Samsung’s Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS) solution, edge traffic steering, and network slicing capabilities. Defined in 3GPP standards, the CUPS architecture, according to Samsung, is a fundamental technology to 5G SA core that improves network scalability, flexibility and deployment by separating the control and user plane functions.
“By implementing CUPS since the initial phase of 5G commercialization, we have a competitive advantage in the market,” said Young-soo Seo, senior vice president and head of Network Research Technology Unit at KT Corporation. “With this advantage, we are able to rapidly and easily deploy 5G SA and NSA common core in our MEC centers without additional core networks.”
In August, KT reported that it is on track to close 2020 with 3.5 million 5G subscribers.
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