South Korea’s largest telecommunications firm, KT Corp., said Monday it would commercialize the world’s fastest mobile network, called the GiGA LTE, which combines the current Long Term Evolution networks with Wi-Fi connections.

The new network service offers a maximum download speed of 1.17 Gbps --15 times faster than the existing LTE and four times faster than the tri-band LTE-Advanced, the fastest wireless network currently available in the Korean market.

It also boasts an upload speed 10 times faster than that of the tri-band broadband LTE-A.

The GiGA LTE is expected to help the mobile carrier to gain a competitive edge in the race to bring the 5G network first to the Korean market, accelerating technological advances in the mobile industry.

“The GiGA LTE is a high-end technology that is two or three years ahead of its time,” said Oh Sung-mok, head of KT’s network division, at a press meeting in Seoul.

“KT will spare no efforts to develop faster and more stable mobile technologies for customers,” he added.

The wireless carrier, which has 200,000 LTE base stations and 140,000 Wi-Fi hotspots installed across the nation, also plans to increase the coverage of the GiGA LTE services down the road to accommodate increasing data traffic.