By Park Hyong-ki
SK Telecom, Korea’s biggest mobile carrier, is gearing up to make another leap in long term evolution and open the era of “LTE 2.0” in the country.
Celebrating the first anniversary since the company launched its LTE service in July last year, SK Telecom’s LTE 2.0 refers to offering multicarrier and LTE Advanced (LTE-A) services, with faster speed and accessibility, the company told reporters on Wednesday.
It will launch the multicarrier service next month and aims to make LTE Advanced commercially viable next year, with further plans to establish and expand its telecommunication networks nationwide.
LTE-A, using the carrier-aggregation solution which can group several different frequencies into one channel, enables smart-device users to download a 1.4 GB movie file in less than 75 seconds, SK Telecom said.
It plans to commercialize the carrier aggregation sometime in the second half of 2013.
Furthermore, the company will make its hybrid network integration system, on which users can use both LTE and WiFi networks simultaneously, available in the fourth quarter of this year.
With rising demand for faster data transmission, the Korean mobile carrier giant will seek to acquire additional frequencies or channels to establish a new line of mobile networks.
Another plan it has in store is featuring a premium voice over LTE (VoLTE) service that integrates voice, visual and data systems called “HD Voice” in the latter half of this year.
This is part of efforts to make LTE further available to the public, it noted.
SK Telecom was the second telecommunications company to launch LTE in the world in July 2011, securing some 3.4 million users in a year.
The company expects to have over 7 million users by the end of this year, with the aim of seeking 13 million by 2013, and 21 million by 2015.
(hkp@heraldcorp.com)