In conversation with KDDI and Samsung

GSMA 5G-Advanced Video Interview (KDDI-Samsung)
Moderator: Emma Sargeant, Senior Marketing Manager, GSMA
Interviewees
KDDI: Tatsuo Sato, Network and Cloud Platform, General Manager, and Executive Officer
Samsung: Ji-Yun Seol, Head of Product Strategy, Networks Business
Release date: November 2024

Full transcript

GSMA (Emma)
Hello and welcome to the GSMA TechFiveG interview series.
I’m Emma Sargeant, Senior Marketing Manager at the GSMA.

I’m joined today by Tatsuo Sato, Network and Cloud Platform, General Manager, and Executive Officer at KDDI and Ji-Yun Seol, Head of Product Strategy, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics.

Today’s discussion is around 5G-Advanced, specifically how 5G-Advanced is going to add value for the mobile industry and its customers.

[Question 1]

GSMA (Emma)
So, to kick off, Tatsuo, can you give an overview of why 5G-Advanced is so important to telcos and the industry?

KDDI (Tatsuo-san)
All right. Thank you Emma. Thank you for inviting me here.

First of all, let me talk a little about the 5G situation in Japan. We have started our 5G service from March 2020, and it’s already passed about four years and a half and a number of base stations up and running, with sub6, a 100MHz spectrum chunk is about 40,000 with KDDI’s network.

So, we also use a format of the spectrum to expand the 5G coverage. As we expand the 5G coverage, the values 5G-Advanced will bring may have been partially realised with our 5G network already.

For example, we have provided greater capacity. We have added network slicing capability to our network. We have implemented power saving capability with, intelligence, to name a few.

Although, we have realised some benefit with our existing network, we still need to have new features and extended capability from our partners like Samsung, in order to create new services and monetise 5G.

Another aspect I think that is important is automation.
As the volume of data is increasing and networks become more complex, automation is what we have to do to simplify and improve efficiency to our operation.

I think 5G-Advanced will enhance the benefits and flexibility to our network, more and more, to our services.

GSMA (Emma)
Great. Thank you for that, and setting the scene in terms of the progress that KDDI is making.

So, Ji-Yun bringing you in here. Can you elaborate a little bit more on the longstanding, collaboration between Samsung and KDDI? Potentially address some of the challenges faced with 5G-Advanced deployment and how Samsung and KDDI have addressed these challenges.

Samsung (Ji-yun)
Thanks, Emma.
We have a long partnership with KDDI. It has been more than 20 years so far from CDMA, LTE, now deploying 5G into KDDI’s commercial networks. And ten years of LTE commercial collaboration.

And we have done 5G journey so far, for five year we have been doing with KDDI, and we are moving to the next phase of 5G as 5G-Advanced, adopting new technologies like Massive MIMO and network slicing into KDDI’s commercial networks.

And these technologies, we believe, will provide better user experiences and create new service cases that could get the best out of the 5G technologies.

[Question 2]

GSMA (Emma)
Can you share some examples of 5G-Advanced use cases for the listeners describing how 5G will work and what it might bring in practice?

Samsung (Ji-yun)
Samsung sees 5G-Advanced as more of a second phase of the 5G journey, with fine tunes network capabilities and leads us into a softwarized and automated networks.

For instance, it is about gaining network flexibility with virtualisation and softwarization, boosting capacity and performance to address traffic demands and innovating hardware including Massive MIMO to enhance operation efficiency through automation. And evolving network operations through AI/ML adoption.

So, we are focusing on these areas with KDDI to make the compelling use cases more robust and diverse.

Capacity and coverage boost with MIMO technology will be one thing and supporting new use cases and services requirements with the flexible features and capabilities that 5G and 5G-Advanced can provide, like low latency and reliability.

And user experience, we can support new business cases like with the network slicing service that we are currently collaborating with KDDI.

GSMA (Emma)
Brilliant. Thank you. So that gives us a really good indicator in terms of where we’re traveling with 5G-Advanced currently.

[Question 3]

GSMA (Emma)
So, Tatsuo, let’s bring you back in here, so KDDI already have network slicing deployed in Japan for enterprise customers. Can you share what 5G-Advanced will bring in on top of your existing offerings to your enterprise customers?

KDDI (Tatsuo-san)
Sure. The internet data traffic is increasing and the growth of AI usage may start to increase even more.

People may think data downlink is important. However, performance improvement on the uplink is also very important. For example, with better uplink performance TV broadcasters can use 5G to transmit video stream. KDDI and Samsung, collaborate together, and we have already conducted multiple commercial trials with TV stations to broadcast live video from sporting events such as baseball or a marathon race.

At that trial, we use 5G network slicing to ensure uplink speed and latency, and we confirm that the broadcasting company get the benefit, such as, reducing the cost throughout the process of the TV programme production and reducing time for preparation and, of course, higher quality of transmission.

I think the quality of performance will be more and more improved with 5G-Advanced for the future.

GSMA (Emma)
Brilliant. Thank you, Tatsuo. So it really sounds like a step change for the industry that 5G-Advanced will bring. Let’s dive into the technical enablers of 5G-Advanced.

[Question 4]

GSMA (Emma)
So, Ji-Yun, bringing you back in here. Can you share the technical enablers of 5G-Advanced and explain how these technical enablers are supporting use cases?

Samsung (Ji-yun)
We believe the key technical enablers are software-based open network.

By virtualising networks and implementing intelligent management solutions like automation and opening interfaces between different parts of the network, a software-based open network brings operators immense flexibility and scalability, ultimately enhancing the end user experience.

Second will be AI-powered autonomous network. So, AI-powered autonomous network can improve operation of the network and deliver better performance and customer experiences. By leveraging the AI-powered automation, operators can build a network that can ensure high network capacity and high user experience quality, even under the congested traffic situation. And network slicing will be one part of this automation solution as well.

And third will be the radio innovation like the Massive MIMO. It’s not only a hardware innovation but also the software algorithms within as well.

Massive MIMO is essential for future networks. It has been the key technology for 5G,
also the key part of 5G-Advanced as well as 6G to provide a better capacity and provide better performance for better user experience.

And these will be the key enablers, we believe, for 5G-Advanced and towards the 6G journey as well.

GSMA (Emma)
Brilliant, and, these technical enablers, are they available today? And if not, do you know when they’ll be available?

Samsung (Ji-yun)
These are currently already available. And KDDI, together with us have been adopting these technologies and products into their networks. And these are already available, but also at the same time, evolving towards the next steps in the technical improvements and enhancements.

[Question 5]

GSMA (Emma)
Brilliant. And just on that point, Tatsuo, from your point of view, what enablers are KDDI currently using, and what are the timelines in terms of putting them to use?

KDDI (Tatsuo-san)
We have implemented some part of 5G-Advanced functions already, like Massive MIMO, vRAN, ORAN, network slicing. And 5G-Advanced aims to realise features to improve and enhance 5G quality, but it is important to make it widely accessible through advanced and efficient coverage expansion.

To help buy the coverage with quality, we expect new technology enhancement in radio antenna such as Massive MIMO and radio repeaters. As Ji-Yun mentioned, virtualisations such as vRAN or ORAN, play an important role to make the coverage expansion easier to add value, added features, easier to add resiliency, and to implement automation.

We also have to consider to save energy when we deploy more base stations. KDDI plan to continuously deploy new features in our nationwide network to provide network experience and the service to our consumer and enterprise customers.

[Question 6]

GSMA (Emma)
Great. Thank you, Tatsuo. So moving on from that and building on top of that. Do you see consumers and your partners potentially paying a premium for the guaranteed latency and reliability that 5G-Advanced technologies will bring? Can you just elaborate on the opportunity there?

KDDI (Tatsuo-san)
That is a good question. Actually, we are working with our business partners to make a gaming service for consumers.

However, value added premium service attracts enterprise customers more, I think. KDDI is collaborating with many areas of business to create value to our enterprise customers, such as mobility, retail, logistics and broadcast as I touched on earlier and smart city and more.

In that collaboration with our business partners, it is expected to open up our service function with network APIs. With those APIs, developers can easily access advanced 5G capability we provide and our business partners are able to provide more value to our end users.

KDDI is involved in the Open Gateway of GSMA and promoting the API enhancement.

GSMA (Emma)
Thank you. Tatsuo.

[Question 7]

GSMA (Emma)
So, Ji-Yun, bringing you back in, to talk more broadly then about the potential business models of 5G-Advanced for mobile network operators, what business models are available with 5G-Advanced and what are the opportunities, there for transformation and monetisation?

Samsung (Ji-yun)
In discussing potential business models, end-user experience must be considered. It is crucial for existing users to feel value with the service they are paying for.

To achieve such user experience, ensuring reliable and high performing commercial network performance is crucial. And that is what 5G-Advanced technology and its use cases can provide.

And through hardware and software enhancements with 5G-Advanced technology, Samsung is advancing its technology and providing cutting-edge solutions together with KDDI for the new business models as well.

Just like Tatsuo mentioned, Samsung is partnering with KDDI on their new business cases, utilising the network slicing technology and providing new features and performance improvements with the hardware products like Massive MIMO and solutions to support reliable and low latency performance with higher throughput for the specific business cases.

We look forward to seeing 5G’s flexible technology and high performance network slicing features and AI/ML creating more business opportunities like broadcasting and gaming services, like how Tatsuo explained.

GSMA (Emma)
Brilliant. Thank you, Ji-Yun. It really sounds like 5G-Advanced is unlocking a lot of reliability in terms of services for the customer. So there’s some exciting opportunities for the industry as a whole.

[Question 8]

GSMA (Emma)
Ji-Yun, how would you describe the current pace of 5G-Advanced adoption in 2024? Has it progressed as expected, or have there been any surprises or delays compared to your initial projections?

Samsung (Ji-yun)
5G commercialisation worldwide, it has been [deployed for] five years so far. The first 5G commercialisation happened in 2019, 2020. And with KDDI we’ve been doing this around for five years so far.

Looking at the speed of the deployments, it has been quite fast in some of the countries with our major customers like KDDI. So, Japan was one case, and now there will be Korea and the US. So, these regions and operators there have been adopting this 5G technology and deploying into their commercial networks very quickly.

And after five years, 5G is getting matured and the industry has their eyes focused on the next phase of 5G, which we may call it 5G-Advanced.

However, the transition of 5G to 5G-Advanced is portrayed differently compared to that of LTE to LTE-Advanced in terms of deployment speed and the forecast of the market.

I believe what we really need to focus on is how we transform the networks into the virtualised and softwarised, with more flexibility and the scalability with a future-proof solution, and moving towards the next generation of these communications networks into 6G.

So, Samsung’s networks virtualization journey is currently at version 3.0. We’ve been evolving this technology every two years into this step, and we believe in the next 1 or 2 years we’ll see another leap in this virtualisation journey as well.

The same for other technologies as mentioned, like Massive MIMO. We’ve been doing this Massive MIMO enhancement evolution with more integrated antenna elements and supporting larger capacity with smaller power consumption and with a compact size that could be easy for the operators to deploy into their networks.

And this kind of evolution happened, it has been happening for every 2 to 3 years so far. So, this kind of evolution for 5G to 5G-Advanced and to 6G will happen as we’ve been doing so far.

GSMA (Emma)
Great. Thank you, Ji-Yun. Tatsuo, would you agree with this and can you share any deployment plans for KDDI in collaboration with Samsung?

KDDI (Tatsuo-san)
Yeah, I totally agree with Ji-Yun. The 5G-Advanced will bring more value or more function and also, a lot of evolution to our existing 5G. So, we are expecting Samsung to implement 5G-Advanced function to the commercial pullbacks as soon as possible.

So, if there are products available, KDDI will adapt the new technology to our network and from our experience with 5G, it might take a year or two, but the, if there are better solutions and good solutions, we would like to implement that function as soon as possible.

[Question 9]

GSMA (Emma)
Brilliant and, Ji-Yun, are there any particular sectors that you feel are more likely to embrace 5G technologies and pioneer the technology?

Samsung (Ji-yun)
In terms of applying the 5G technology so far, it has been on the macro networks.
But the next sector we can apply these 5G technologies with all these hardware products as well as software solutions will be the private 5G or the enterprise sector to support different use cases, services with dedicated spectrum or common spectrum with the macro networks together.

And there, network slicing can work as one enabler as well to share the spectrum while dedicating spectrum for the specific services for these private network sectors.

GSMA (Emma)
Brilliant, thank you both for joining me today. It’s been a pleasure to speak to you.