SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) and Deutsche Telekom announced today that they entered into a strategic business partnership agreement to collaborate in the fields of services, Internet of Things (IoT) and related R&D areas.

With the aim to strengthen their capabilities as ICT industry leaders and to achieve new growth through joint business opportunities in Asian and European Markets, SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom will cooperate in the global sales of innovative solutions and products and work together to lead standardization of innovative technologies, including 5G enabling technologies and SDDC(Software-Defined Data Center).

-            Cloud Streaming Solution, Pico Beamer, International Roaming

As part of the collaboration, SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom will also make joint efforts to expand markets for their solutions and products/services.

SK Telecom's technological competency with regard to Cloud Streaming* was successfully demonstrated through the solution tests conducted at Deutsche Telekom's T-Labs in December 2015. The two companies will conduct a feasibility test for its potential commercialization in Deutsche Telekom’s footprint by the second quarter of 2016. Going forward, through partnership with Deutsche Telekom, who has 6 million TV subscribers in Europe, SK Telecom expects to secure a bridgehead to enter into the European markets with its Cloud Streaming solution.

*Provided by SK Telecom’s subsidiary ENTRIX, Cloud Streaming is an innovative solution that enables even the legacy/low-end set-top boxes to support the latest user interfaces as it is built on software virtualization technologies. The solution thereby allows companies to significantly reduce costs for set-top box investment and subscriber acquisition.

Moreover, the two companies have agreed to introduce SK Telecom’s pico beamer to Germany in the second quarter of 2016 and then to other countries in Europe. They also agreed to launch Deutsche Telekom’s in-car Wi-Fi solution in the Korean market.

SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom will also cooperate in the international roaming service area, including quality improvements, signature of Service Level Agreements and pursuit of LTE based roaming services.

-            Smart City

Another area of collaboration is in the IoT to develop innovative services in an urban setting. They are now ready to combine their efforts to mutually investigate industry leading smart city solutions. This will enable the two to serve the customer needs in the best way to make their cities smarter and to expand the related services into new markets.

-            Technology R&D

Under the partnership agreement, the two companies will pursue joint R&D activities to develop cutting-edge technologies - including 5G enabling technologies - and push for their standardization, while actively taking a part in diverse global projects to drive ICT infrastructure innovations.

In particular, through development of key 5G technologies such as network slicing and mobile edge computing, they plan to drive standardization and implementation of 5G, and identify 5G key applications.

In addition, as members of the Open Compute Project, the Facebook-led open source hardware and data center design initiative, the two companies will play proactive roles to achieve innovations in the network-IT infrastructure.

Furthermore, SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom have joined the Next Generation Enterprise Network Alliance (ngena) as founding members. ‘ngena’ is an alliance of international telecommunications companies to provide truly international network services for enterprise customers, securely and reliably from a single source. ‘ngena’ is a standalone company with independent management. It comes with a completely new business model and a new technology in a greenfield setting, sharing network assets of trusted service providers.

“The idea is to create an amazing technology partnership with tangible results. The development and exchange of new services will help both companies generate more benefit for our customers,” stated Tim Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom. “But it’s also about learning from each other. We are really impressed with SK Telecom’s agility and creativity, and look forward to exchanging ideas and experiences.”

“SK Telecom is excited to enter into a strategic partnership with Deutsche Telekom, which holds a strong technology and market leadership across the globe," said Jang Dong-hyun, President and CEO of SK Telecom. "By building on each other’s strengths, we will unlock new growth opportunities and pave the way for the future ICT industry.”