Korea’s biggest mobile carrier SK Telecom announced on Wednesday that it had launched the first LTE-Advanced network in the world, with speeds twice as fast as the existing long-term evolution network.

SKT has begun providing LTE-A service, becoming the first to commercialize among some 175 mobile carriers offering LTE networks in about 70 countries around the world, the company said.

Twice as fast as the current LTE and 10 times faster than the 3G network, LTE-A makes it possible to download an 800-megabyte movie in about forty seconds. 

At first, the service will be available in Seoul and 42 other major cities in Gyeonggi and Chungcheong Provinces, as well as some 103 university campuses located in these regions, the company said.

The LTE-A utilizes the carrier aggregation method, which bonds two or more separate radio frequencies to provide faster speeds.

Boosting speeds up to 150 Mbps, SK Telecom has combined two 10 MHz frequency channels, according to the company.

As worldwide data traffic is expected to surge in the near future, major mobile carriers have been in a competitive bid to realize the first CA technology.

According to industry experts, SKT’s advantage in CA technology will allow it to achieve up to 300 Mbps connection speeds in 2015, and by 2016, bonding three different frequencies will be realized.

Some experts even predict that at the current rate of information and communications technology advancement, a 5G network providing 1,000 times faster connection speeds than the new LTE-A network will become available by 2020.

Not all smartphone users here are thrilled with the new and faster network service nonetheless, especially those who believed that their mobile devices were compatible with the latest IT technology.

Samsung Electronics released the new LTE-A compatible Galaxy S4 on the same day SKT began servicing LTE-A network. Users of non-LTE-A Galaxy S4 smartphones ― which had been released in April this year ― are voicing their discontent.

“Every time something changes in the industry, we, the consumers get victimized,” said an old Galaxy S4 user.

Currently, Samsung’s Galaxy S4 is the only LTE-A compatible smartphone available in the market. LG Electronics and Pantech are expected to release their LTE-A models in August this year.

“We will of course continue to provide 2G, 3G and LTE network services,” said an SK Telecom official.

“However, for the sake of technological advancement, it’s necessary that we focus our marketing strategy on LTE-A.”

SK Telecom predicts that approximately half of its new customers this year will opt for the LTE-A, instead of LTE services.

The monthly service fees for LTE-A are expected to remain at the same level as the current LTE services.

By Kwon Bum-joon (bjkwon@heraldcorp.com)