Samsung's Virtualized Core Solution Chosen to Support SK Telecom's Nationwide IoT Network

SEOUL, Korea – February 05, 2015 - Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today announced that it has been selected as the sole vendor for SK Telecom's nationwide Network Function Virtualization (NFV) deployment. As part of the agreement, Samsung will provide its AdaptiV Core solution for the operator's dedicated mobile IoT(Internet of Things) network.

"We are delighted to collaborate with Samsung on our NFV solution for SK Telecom's IoT services," said Jong-bong Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Network Division at SK Telecom. "SK Telecom is preparing for the IoT era through active business collaboration. Through the application of virtualized network technologies, we are confident that we can deliver a truly consistent and innovative network as well as superior service quality."

The IoT network, driven by Samsung's AdaptiV Core, is scheduled to go live in the first half of 2015, and will see initial applications targeting package delivery tracking, CCTV monitoring and city-wide sensor monitoring.

"We are honoured that SK Telecom has selected Samsung as the sole vendor to support SK Telecom's sophisticated mobile network," said Youngky Kim, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. "NFV is one of the core technologies of next-generation mobile networks and will play a critical role in helping telecom operators in terms of network deployment, management and operation as well as service efficiency and rapid scalability." 

Samsung successfully completed its virtualized EPC Proof of Concept (PoC) and subsequent trials with SK Telecom in late 2013, and was chosen by SK Telecom in 2015 for deployment in the mobile carrier's dedicated network for IoT services.

Samsung's AdaptiV Core scored the highest among vendors competing for the contract with SK Telecom, particularly in the areas of product performance, functionality, stability and ease of management. The solution emphasizes a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) and the ability to easily manage virtualized resources.

Samsung's AdaptiV Core includes a virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC), which runs on a KVM-based hypervisor on a common server hardware platform, and Samsung's CognitiV Cloud Manager System.

The vEPC will be responsible for managing traffic to and from IoT-type devices, leveraging its ability to scale network functions as needed to provide a dynamic balance of capacity, performance, power consumption and resource availability. The CognitiV Cloud Manager will be responsible for managing this process, keeping track of available resources and network load, while also providing SK Telecom with a powerful and straightforward interface with which to customize the behaviour of each Virtualized Network Function (VNF). It will also determine network status and easily manage hardware resources as needed.

Samsung's LTE solutions are supported by over 30 years of experience and leadership in developing and commercializing telecom technologies. With years of proven field experience in LTE technologies, Samsung has successfully partnered with dozens of mobile service providers, facilitating the implementation of the most advanced LTE networks available on the market today.

SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM, KSE: 017670), established in 1984, is Korea's largest telecommunications company with more than 28 million mobile subscribers, accounting for over 50% of the market. The company reached KRW 17.164 trillion in revenue in 2014. As the world's first company to commercialize CDMA, CDMA 2000 1x, CDMA EV-DO and HSDPA networks, SK Telecom launched the nation's first LTE service in July 2011. SK Telecom also became the world's first mobile carrier to commercialize 150Mbps LTE-Advanced in June 2013 and 225Mbps LTE-Advanced in June 2014 through Carrier Aggregation(CA). In line with its efforts to swiftly move towards the next-generation mobile network system, or 5G, it successfully commercialized 300Mbps tri-band LTE-A CA. As of December 2014, the company has over 16.7 million LTE and LTE-Advanced subscribers. Based on its strength in network operations business, SK Telecom is seeking new growth engines in areas of platform, Big Data and convergence business. For more information, please visit www.sktelecom.com or email to press@sktelecom.com

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative ideas and technologies, redefining the worlds of TVs, smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, cameras, digital appliances, printers, medical equipment, network systems and semiconductors. We are also leading in the Internet of Things space through, among others, our Digital Health and Smart Home initiatives. We employ 307,000 people across 84 countries. To discover more, please visit our official website at www.samsung.com and our official blog at global.samsungtomorrow.com.