Ahead of MWC, SK Telecom published its latest 6G White Paper, which was the third installment of its 6G research. This latest document, titled ‘Vision on Future Network Architecture, ATHENA’, is SKT’s mid- to long-term network evolution strategy. The system will be cloud-native, and include AI-based automation, open interfaces, and zero trust architecture. The RAN will be a vendor-agnostic system that uses any matter of chipsets and general-purpose servers. SKT’s 6G framework does not extend drastically beyond the systems starting to be built today under 5G and 5G Standalone. It offers a middle-ground trajectory that incorporates the popular elements being picked up by operators today, and also focuses on important commercial values for MNOs: operational efficiency, customer experience, and monetization.…