SEOUL, KOREA — SK Telecom announced today that its LTE subscribers surpassed 4 million as of July 20, which further solidifies its position as the world’s second largest LTE service provider leading the era of ‘LTE 2.0.’
The company exceeded 4 million LTE subscribers in just 44 days after breaking the 3 million mark in June 6, 2012. In particular, SK Telecom signed up a daily average of 41,000 LTE users in July, which is a 71% increase from 24,000 recorded in June.
SK Telecom is projecting that it will top 7 million LTE subscribers by the end of 2012, backed by a strong customer preference towards its LTE service. It is expecting to secure over a million LTE customers in July alone and currently, around 75% of SK Telecom’s new subscribers are choosing LTE.
The recent sharp growth of the company’s LTE users also has been supported by the huge popularity of SK Telecom branded ‘Galaxy SⅢ LTE.’ Released on July 9, Galaxy SⅢ LTE sales reached 200,000 within 10 days. Moreover, as the first carrier to launch Samsung’s Galaxy series, the company is now enjoying great benefits as some 10,000 Galaxy SⅠusers are switching to Galaxy SⅢ LTE per day.
Moreover, as of July 20, SK Telecom sold over 300,000 devices that support Multi Carrier (MC), a technology the company commercialized, for the first time in the world, on July 1 for optimal distribution of data traffic by utilizing both 800MHz and 1.8GHz frequency bands.
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.
The company plans to provide around 3 million LTE MC-compatible devices and apply the technology to all areas of Seoul as well as six metropolitan cities by the end of 2012 to allow LTE users to experience the fastest speed even at times of unexpected surges of mobile data traffic.
Furthermore, SK Telecom will strengthen benefits of T Freemium, an LTE-specialized multimedia package available for LTE 62 price plan or above. T Freemium provides users with points worth KRW 20,000 per month for free to allow them to experience diverse multimedia contents including latest movies, dramas, games, applications and e-books. On July 10, within only 100 days since its launch on April 2, the number of T Freemium subscribers exceeded 1 million and the number of content downloads reached 6 million. Until the end of August 2012, T Freemium users who spend more than 18,000 points for downloading contents like movies and dramas will be given an additional 10,000 points.
“As SK Telecom has completed nationwide LTE deployment covering 99% of Korean population in June 1 2012, customers are now asking for more than just a wide coverage,” said Jang Dong-hyun, Executive Vice President and Head of Marketing Division of SK Telecom. “SK Telecom continues to fortify its LTE market leadership by thoroughly preparing itself for the LTE 2.0 era, moving ahead of others in the areas of HD Voice (VoLTE service) and MC technology and offering many different types of LTE-specialized services including T Freemium and network games.”
