For how much flack people give Samsung around the world for anything from a bad fanbase to the materials used not being of high enough quality, they are a rather progressive manufacturer, and specifically so in their homeland of South Korea. On Thursday, Samsung and the largest South Korean wireless service provider, SK Telecom, signed an agreement to work together to further the development of and help to launch the first 5G network in the country. They also will be working together on a few other key areas of communication technologies as well, according to The Korea Herald.
Samsung, which has led the mobile communications market in hardware for a while, and SK Telecom, which has provided coverage for Korea, as well as a specific partnership to provide service for Samsung’s first stand-alone smartwatch, the Gear S, looked to the future with plans to not only develop the technologies necessary and requisite for a 5G network for data, but also on international communication technologies such as the country’s emergency response network and mobile payment systems.
Samsung and SK Telecom have also said that they will be working in tandem to improve and increase upon what we already have in terms of wearable technologies, as well as the Internet of Things (the connected devices that manage and run throughout your life like a smart thermostat, door lock, or what have you), as well as the mobile devices themselves that will be needed and able to utilize the aforementioned 5G network(s). With the two giant South Korean firms working together, we will no doubt see some progress and improvement in the comings months and years. in the mentioned (and likely other) sectors of the technology and communications industries. Wherever the next G network comes from Korea or elsewhere, it will be interesting to see how the quality, but also the capabilities, of the network will be improved and managed, because it will, like LTE-A, be a slow process to roll out and become active globally. As Samsung turns inward, to focus on its home country, will its expertise in the industries it has, be what it takes to affect the desired changes? Time will tell.