SK Telecom (SKT), South Korea’s largest mobile operator, partnered with the Korea Transportation Safety Authority (KOTSA) to build a so-called 5G network for testing autonomous vehicles in K-City, the country’s pilot city for developing self-driving technologies.

SKT said in a statement the 5G test infrastructure supports a peak download speed of 20Gb/s, a communications control centre that transfers data to a test vehicle in less than 0.001 seconds and 3D HD maps with accuracy of less than 20cm. The test site was set up in three months.

K-City, located in Hwaseong, southwest of Seoul, covers an area of about 363,000 square metres and is designed to resemble real-world driving conditions. The test site gives Korean automakers and tech companies a platform to test 5G self-driving technology.

“We will continue to work with KOTSA to make K-City a mecca for self-driving research and development,” said Lee Jong-ho, SVP and vehicle unit leader at SKT.

SKT said 5G is a core infrastructure required to make vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technologies a reality. The idea is that, by using 5G infrastructure, autonomous driving will be able to predict accidents by sharing information between all types of vehicles.