SK Telecom said that executives from Taiwan Mobile visited the Korean company on Tuesday to benchmark its operation of Long Term Evolution technology.

Three Taiwan Mobile executives, including chief technology officer Tom Koh, paid a visit to learn not only of SK Telecom’s LTE infrastructure and services, but also its smart learning, e-healthcare and security businesses.

The visit came after the two sides signed a memorandum of understanding to form a strategic alliance in telecommunication convergence business and to seek new growth engines, Korea’s biggest mobile carrier said.

This marks the ninth visit by an overseas company to see how SK Telecom operates its LTE services, following Vodafone from the U.K., China Telecom from Beijing, KPN from the Netherlands and SFR from France, among others.

SK Telecom became the world’s second telecommunications company to launch LTE in July 2011 after U.S.-based Verizon, 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.

By Park Hyong-ki (hkp@heraldcorp.com)