▲ Kim Young-kung, Director, Head of NG-OSS Lab, Network Technology R&D Center of SK Telecom poses for a picture with Allan Tan, Regional Content and Strategy Director at Questex, after the award ceremony.

SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM) today announced that the company has been named the winner of the “Best Asian Telecom Carrier” award at this year’s Telecom Asia Awards held in Singapore.

The company also took home the“Most Innovative Approach to Analytic” award for its next-generation AI network, ‘TANGO,’ at the prestigious global ICT award. With it, the company once again proved its status as Asia’s top carrier.

※Now on its 21st year, Telecom Asia Awards is the region’s longest-running award for the telecoms industry, hosted by Asia's largest regional telecommunications and IT media, Telecom Asia.

SK Telecom received the “Best Asian Telecom Carrier” award at this year’s Telecom Asia Awards for pioneering in the deployment of 5G standard and leading the 4.5G LTE network evolution.

It successfully tested 5G network using both 5G and LTE (5G’s NSA standard) last December, and this June, it carried out the nation’s first test trial of 5G SA. The company also grouped 5 LTE frequencies into a single-frequency network last June and commercialized the 5-Band CA (carrier aggregation) for the first time in the world, making speedy and flawless data transmission possible.

SK Telecom was also chosen as the winner of the “Most Innovative Approach to Analytic”award for its next-generation AI network, ‘TANGO.’

SK Telecom’s “TANGO (T Advanced Next Generation OSSOperational Supporting System)” is a big data analysis- and machine learning-based AI network management system that finds and solves network problems and optimizes itself. The company applied TANGO to the wired network in December 2016 and expanded its application to the wireless network last October. Last September, it signed a strategic partnership with Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecommunications services provider, to transfer its OSS technologies and solutions to the latter.

Prior to the latest event, the company had won the “Best Network Development of the Year Award” at TechXLR8 Awards 2018 held on June 12 in England, signifying that its global competitiveness in the ICT industry has been increasingly recognized. 

“Winning the Best Asian Telecom Carrier award at the Telecom Asia Awards 2018 proves that our efforts to advance 5G and IoT network technology were globally recognized,” said Park Jong-Kwan, Senior Vice President and Head of ICT R&D Center of SK Telecom. “We will continue to advance our technology to lead the upcoming 5G era.”