South Korea’s ICT Ministry mentioned in an official statement on July 13th that the ministry has opened up a new testing facility for products that run on 5G networks. This move will not only ensure that the 5G in the country gets momentum, but it will also support small and mid-sized companies, or so the statement released by the ministry said.
Other countries that are at the forefront of the development of 5G technology, have all come forward with definitive 5G testbeds. India joined the same venture only a few months back. Other countries with durable 5G testbeds include the US, the UK, the European Union, Sweden, Finland, Thailand, China, Japan, India, and of course, South Korea. In various countries, the main idea and drive behind developing the 5G testbeds was to facilitate 5G networks for experimenting and demonstrating applications and how they could be implemented in various IoT-based systems and services in the country.
South Korea has allocated a total of 19.8 billion won which is approximately $13.8 million, to develop the testing center in Gumi, about 260 kilometers southeast of Seoul, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT.
The new facility set up by the ministry will support local companies in checking whether their connected devices work on local and global 5G networks before start running their businesses.
The testbed has established infrastructure for products that run on non-standalone 5G, and the ministry said it will introduce standalone 5G infrastructure this year. Reportedly, South Korean telecom operators have not commercialized standalone 5G technology yet. If it is implemented it would make sure an improvement in the latency. As of the end of May, the country’s 5G users reached 15.8 million, accounting for 22 percent of the total 71 million mobile subscriptions, according to ministry data.
