11 February 2019 – Though its December 2018 launch of 5G services was focused on enterprises rather than consumers, South Korean wireless carrier SK Telecom used New Year’s Day as an opportunity to demonstrate how 5G will influence both markets in 2019. Starting at midnight on January 1, the carrier offered a live 11-minute broadcast of the country’s largest New Year’s celebration in Seoul, relying on ultra-low latency livestreams over its 5G network for the footage.
While the “5G” value of the broadcast might seem subtle to average users, it’s actually more important than it initially appears. SK Telecom used 5G mobile routers and base stations to stream multiple live videos from smartphones running its T Live Caster app, delivering wireless latency comparable to a wired connection. Viewers were able to see “live” footage streamed with an under one-second delay, demonstrating how 5G smartphones will empower instant field reporting
Latency and instant field reporting are big factors in the demand for 5G and later this week we’ll have a video that explains the importance of all this stuff so you have a better perspective on the “alphabet soup” … LTE, 4G, 5G, 5G-NR, etc., etc. … and the complexity of what has happened in cellular technology over the past two decades.
In the meantime, please enjoy a video we shot last year at MWC 2018: SK Telecom and their 5G 360 phones, using a stitching technology that will seamlessly “stitch” multiple videos and images taken with 360-degree cameras via its multi-band blending algorithm. And as you will see it was a very loooong day of shooting and I was a bit frazzled 🙂