Arista Networks is providing switching platforms for SK Telecom’s 5G network. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Specifically, SK Telecom will be building a high capacity leaf-spine based data center network environment leveraging VXLAN/EVPN for virtualization, scalability and availability, providing customers with reliable high-speed network services. SK Telecom intends to apply Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) for an efficient IT infrastructure expansion plan in line with its service expansion.
Arista said it is providing SK Telecom with universal spine and leaf network switches, combining routing and switching to reduce complexity and significantly improve scale without compromising performance at speeds of 100+Tbps. In addition, Arista’s network switches enable functionality such as 100GbE aggregation, large routing tables, high resiliency, hybrid cloud traffic patterns, lossless connectivity and real-time monitoring in a single chassis, meeting the requirements of commercial, private and hybrid clouds.
“By installing Arista Networks’ network switches optimized for 5G in our infrastructure, we have been able to provide high-quality 5G services quickly and reliably to our customers,” said Se Wook Kim, Manager for SK Telecom’s Core Engineering Team of Infra Eng Group at ICT Infra Center. “Arista Networks also offers prompt and expert support services appropriate for our business characteristics, for which reliable service operation is essential. In the future, we intend to work together to proceed with network infrastructure upgrades in accordance with our 3G service expansion,” he added.
“We are delighted to be working with SK Telecom to deliver a 5G open architecture with programmable automation that will scale to support their customers,” said Mark Foss, Senior Vice President, Global Operations and Marketing for Arista Networks.
SK Telecom tops 1 million 5G subscribers just 4 months after launch
On August 21, SK Telecom became the first mobile operator in the world to exceed the 1 million 5G subscriber mark. The company’s 5G subscribers now represent more than 3.5 percent of its total subscriber base of 28 million.
The 1 million subscriber milestone was achieved 140 days after launching the world’s first 5G smartphone on April 3, which is twice faster than its LTE uptake rate. After commercializing the LTE service in July 2011, the company hit the 1 million LTE subscriber mark in eight months.
The 5G service is also driving up customers’ data usage. According to SK Telecom’s analysis on 5G subscribers, the average monthly data usage of customers who switched devices from LTE to 5G has increased about 65 percent from 20.4GB (LTE) to 33.7GB (5G).
