South Korea’s SK Telecom (SKT) and Sweden’s Ericsson have demoed 5G network slicing technology at the operator’s R&D centre in Bundang, a satellite city of Seoul.

The firms said in a statement they created different virtual network slices and were able to isolate and protect the slices from one another, which claims to solve a major challenge that can arise when multiple virtual networks share one physical network.

The companies argue the network slices are optimised for use cases such as massive Internet of Things (IoT) services and multi-view and augmented reality/virtual reality services.

Network slicing technology is drawing attention from standardisation bodies such as 3GPP and ITU as well as operators, equipment vendors and software firms as a practical solution to support diverse 5G services in a reliable and efficient manner, SKT said.

SKT CTO Alex Jinsung Choi said the demonstration is a significant step towards achieving the world’s first commercialisation or deployment of a 5G network system.

Ericsson CTO Ulf Ewaldsson said the success of network slicing is critical to enable the network to be an innovation platform for new types of applications to meet future expectations.

The announcement follows the two companies signing a collaboration agreement in July to develop 5G core and network slicing technologies.