BARCELONA, Spain ― Pyo Hyun-myung, president of the mobile business unit at KT Corp., said Tuesday that the company would not compete with other telecom carriers to be the first to offer voice calls on the Long Term Evolution network.

“Goals like starting the voice-over-LTE within the year are more like rhetoric from the perspective of service providers. What’s more important is the service quality regardless of whether it’s 3G or 4G,” he told reporters at the Mobile World Congress being held in Barcelona.

With the fast filtration rate of the high-speed LTE service in Korea, the nation’s three network operators, SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus, have joined the race to commercialize the voice-over-LTE service faster than others. 

“The VoLTE must solve the service quality issue raised when the wider mobile network coverage leads to a surge in cell sites. KT’s Cloud Communication Center, which is based on virtual base stations, would help disperse network traffic,” he said.

Pyo spared some words about the company’s recent disputes with Samsung Electronics over the fees for Samsung-made smart TVs to pay for the network use.

“A stable ICT ecosystem should be created so that companies can enter overseas markets based on it. Stake-holding groups need to join related talks more actively,” he said.

Pyo was visiting Spain to attend the board members’ meeting of the Global System for Mobile Association, which holds the mobile industry’s largest trade show in Barcelona every year.

KT, for two consecutive years, has joined AT&T and Vodafone to set up the “Connected House,” which aims to help everyone and everything benefit from wireless connections.

The company on Tuesday also won the Best Mobile Broadband Technology for the 17th annual Global Mobile awards at the MWC for its premium WiFi solution.

By Lee Ji-yoon, Korea Herald correspondent
(jylee@heraldcorp.com)