SK Telecom, the largest mobile operator in South Korea, and the Korean Transportation Safety Authority (KOTSA) conducted trials using two self-driving vehicles which shared traffic information via the operator’s pre-standard 5G network.

During the trials, held in Korea’s K-City pilot city for autonomous driving in Hwaseong, two cars used vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications technology, a 3D HD map and deep learning based decision making technology to communicate with each other and share traffic information with a control centre and traffic lights.

SKT said the vehicles, which it co-developed with KOTSA, safely completed trial runs on a 2km track, which included a school zone, crossroads and a highway. SKT deployed a 5G network using the 28GHz frequency band across K-City.

The operator said it will introduce its self-driving technology on the nation’s main highways in 2019 using its 5G network. The company said it co-developed artificial intelligence technology which helps self-driving cars make decisions on their own with Seoul National University. Nvidia will soon deploy a quantum technology-based security module which can prevent attempts to hack communications between self-driving cars and the control centre or IoT devices, SKT said.

In early January, SKT and KOTSA built a so-called 5G network for testing autonomous vehicles in K-City.