SEOUL, KOREA - SK Telecom, Korea’s leading mobile carrier announced to launch a broadband long-term evolution (LTE) service in Seoul and its surrounding areas this year and nationwide next July.
The Broadband LTE service is expected to double the existing LTE network speed. The announcement followed after SK gained authorization to operate 35MHz bandwidth (20downlink + 15uplink) in the 1.8 GHz band. Through this auction, the company will be able to provide 20 MHz downlink LTE service that supports up to 150Mbps speed. Moreover, SK Telecom plans to combine its bandwidths in the 1.8 GHz (20 MHz bandwidth) and 800 MHz (10 MHz) spectrums to offer up to 225 Mbps speed for their LTE-Advanced service by next year.
This will be beneficial to the subscribers of the LTE service provided by SK Telecom, as the broadband service is available to all existing smartphones, without having to pay any additional costs. Furthermore, as the broadband service utilizes one frequency, it will allow more stable downloads and uploads for broadband service users, SK officials stated.
SK’s main competitors in the telecommunications, KT Corporations and LG Uplus, are currently escalating the competition as well to achieve the fastest mobile network.
Last week, KT has also announced their ‘Broadband LTE-A’ service in Seoul and surrounding regions this month and expand it to all metropolitan cities by next March. Similarly KT announced the users of their LTE service can experience the broadband service without having to purchase a new phone. Furthermore, LG Uplus also announced their LTE-A service this June, and the firm also plans to declare plans to meet their competitors.
According to the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, the number of LTE service users accounted to 23 million, as 3G users were numbered to 22 million at the end of June 2013. LTE subscribers are steadily increasing and also the competition for the fastest bandwidth is intensifying.
