- SK Telecom, Samsung and Hana Financial Group established the first 5G-specialized network-based smart office in South Korea’s financial sector
- That may sound unusual, but financial services face a much higher degree of regulations, whereas the use cases in sectors like manufacturing and port facilities are more straightforward
- Of utmost importance to Samsung: end-to-end AI to optimize the entire network rather than confining it to the RAN
If you want it done right, turn to your local experts. At least, that’s what Hana Financial Group did for its new Cheongna headquarters in Incheon, South Korea, where Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom are providing its 5G smart office solutions.
In fact, Samsung made a point to call itself out as the sole vendor to deliver these private 5G solutions for Hana Financial Group’s new digs. And it’s impressive: About 3,000 employees are relocating to the property starting this month; the private network covers 16 floors.
It’s not the first private 5G office implementation in Korea, but it’s the first private 5G office deployment of its type in Korea’s financial industry, according to Eric Hwang, B2B business lead at Samsung’s Networks Business.
That may sound surprising because we've been hearing about private 5G for eons. But Hwang said so far, private 5G deployments have been more prevalent in industrial settings – such as manufacturing, petrochemical and shipbuilding facilities – where uses cases like improving productivity, safety and quality offer straightforward justification.
Carpeted offices, on the other hand, have not seen as many clear use cases for private 5G, making this deployment particularly notable, he said.
“The private 5G network deployed at Hana Financial Group’s headquarters provides the added security of 5G, allowing employees to disconnect from their wired connections and embrace the wireless way of working,” he said. “Regulations around wireless networks in Korea’s financial industry are particularly stringent, with requirements for end-to-end security not only at the RAN level, but across the entire network environment, which this deployment provides.”
Samsung’s deployment at Hana Financial Group’s headquarters uses 4.7 GHz spectrum, which in Korea is dedicated to private 5G networks.
Samsung and private 5G
As one might expect, Samsung has long been involved in Korea’s private 5G adoption. In 2022, Samsung partnered with Naver Cloud to switch on the country’s first private 5G network at Naver Cloud’s secondary headquarters.
Samsung also worked with Hoban Construction, Posco and the Korean Navy on additional deployments, according to Hwang. “As the technology and ecosystem has continued to mature, we’re seeing these capabilities extend into other enterprise environments, like financial services with this deployment,” he said.
It’s worth nothing that Samsung’s 5G Standalone (SA) core enables network slicing. Through the Hana deployment, Hana Financial Group’s subsidiaries will have access to separate network slices, so each operating environment is tailored to individual security policies and business needs.
To address the security needs for a financial institution like Hana, the project deploys a multi-layered security system that spans enhanced encryption, a firewall, DDoS protection and USIM-based authentication.
Why is Samsung so bent on end-to-end AI?
According to Samsung, this deployment also reflects Samsung’s broader “network for AI” vision: that AI workloads will increasingly depend on an end-to-end network architecture capable of supporting them across the entire network, rather than AI being confined to the RAN.
Fierce asked Samsung why it believes it’s so important to apply AI on an end-to-end network basis rather than be confined to the RAN.
“AI in the RAN can optimize radio performance, but end-to-end AI can optimize the entire network, from the device and RAN to the transport network, 5G core, edge, cloud and applications,” Hwang said.
“The broader visibility allows the network to identify and address bottlenecks while dynamically allocating connectivity and compute resources based on the network’s needs. This continuity is particularly important for AI-driven applications like video analytics, robotics and enterprise AI, where performance depends on the entire chain working together,” he concluded.
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