South Korea's telecom provider KT and Ericsson have agreed to strengthen their collaboration in the 5G evolution and to extend this to the Internet of Things (IoT). According to KT, operator is preparing to preview an innovative 5G communications services at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympics.

Ericsson and KT have been working closely together to enable the Networked Society. They have successfully verified heterogeneous network carrier aggregation technology, a key element of 5G last year.

More recently, they have successfully demonstrated 5G Multipoint Connectivity with Distributed MIMO with 5G mobile device equipment installed in a moving vehicle. Multipoint Connectivity with Distributed MIMO with 5G enables the connection of a large number of small cells without interruption, and eliminates possible blind spots in coverage areas. This makes it possible to support gigabit-level wireless services like hologram video communication to moving vehicles.

The next generation of mobile networks, 5G is expected to be commercially available from 2020, but Ericsson already has live indoor and outdoor 5G test networks in Sweden and the US. KT will also start a 5G indoor and outdoor test bed at its R&D center this year in collaboration with Ericsson. The two companies will jointly develop and verify 5G mobile broadband access technologies in 5G candidate frequency bands, ultra-dense network operation technologies, and 5G core technologies and systems to provide gigabit-level data speeds and connectivity with ultra-low latency.

As an extension to their memorandum of understanding (MoU) agreed on at Mobile World Congress 2015 for collaboration on the next-generation networks, KT and Ericsson signed another MoU for collaboration in the area of the IoT.