SK Telecom boast of wifi as fast as 5G

Over at SK Telecom’s Bundang Centre, the team’s efforts in the glamourous world of wifi has seemingly paid off as the Korean telco boasts of speeds of 4.8 Gbps.

First and foremost, this is a lab test, so any chances of these speeds being widely available in the near future are very slim, though it is certainly a positive step forward. Should the claims prove to be true, it would be nearly four times faster than the existing gigabit wifi service which is on newer smartphones.

“By introducing the technology for the next generation Wi-Fi that can deliver as fast as 5G technology, we at SK Telecom have successfully laid foundation to offer better mobile services,” said Park Jin-hyo, Head of Network Technology R&D Center at SK Telecom.

“We are thrilled to work on the preparation on commercializing the technology and continue to innovate our capabilities to provide differentiated services to our customers.”

The technology has built on the IEEE 802.11ax standard, using four antennas to transmit data and 160 MHz bandwidth, operating in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrums. Given 802.11ax chipsets have already been released, SK expects the next generation wifi service to be commercially available for smartphones next year. Smartphones equipped with the chipset theoretically deliver a speed of up to 1.2 Gbps in 80 MHz with two antennas. Quite a bit below the 4.8 Gbps achieved in the lab, but cat videos will take on a whole new existence.

According to a recent survey from Akamai, South Korea has the fastest average broadband speeds in the world (by quite a distance as well!), and SK Telecom are just spoiling the Koreans with this latest step forward. The plans are to deploy access points in next year particularly in high traffic density areas, where users with the new chipset-based smartphones will benefit from bufferless cat videos.

And while the reality might never reach 4.8 Gbps, as you can see below there has been quite an improvement in this chic area of the technology world.