The company developed MC technology to utilize both its existing 800MHz frequency band (20MHz) and the 1.8GHz band (20MHz) it newly acquired last year. With an additional 20MHz uplink/downlink spectrum, it is now using a total of 40MHz for its LTE services.
The biggest strength of MC lies in that it allows the use of additional frequency bands and enables effective and efficient use of frequencies. As it chooses the faster one between the two frequency bands for LTE communications, mobile data traffic is optimally distributed to each frequency band, preventing network overload.
The MC system is similar to building an additional road in the always-congested area and then controlling the traffic to ensure smooth flow on both roads. For instance, upon detecting LTE user concentration in the 800MHz band, the system automatically moves data traffic to 1.8GHz to improve data rate. Therefore, LTE users can experience the fastest speed even at times of unexpected surges of mobile data traffic.
SK Telecom has launched a pilot service for MC in May 2012 and began full-fledged commercialization on July 1 to ensure a more stable and faster LTE service based on twice wider frequency bandwidth than its competitors. Moreover, a firmware update that enables Vega Racer 2 to support MC is being provided since the MC commercialization and Galaxy S3 LTE, to be released this month, will also be able to support the technology through a firmware update. Moreover, most of the smartphones to be released in the second half of 2012 will be built with the MC technology.
Starting with Seoul’s Gangnam area, SK Telecom plans to complete MC roll-out in Seoul and major areas in six metropolitan cities within the year-end. It will also cover massive underground spaces like Underground Shopping Mall at Gangnam Station and COEX. Then, service area will be expanded to 23 cities including the Seoul metropolitan area and other metropolitan cities.
Kwon Hyuk-Sang, Executive Vice President and Head of Network Division of SK Telecom said, “SK Telecom will provide the fastest and the most reliable LTE service through the world's first adoption of the innovative MC technology that allows for the use of twice wider frequency bandwidth than its competitors in Korea."
Meanwhile, with the commercialization of MC, SK Telecom becomes the first in the world to commercialize a 4G technology, following its past success of achieving the world’s first commercialization of CDMA (2G) technology in 1996 and HSDPA (3G) in 2006.
