SEOUL, KOREA - The competition is tightening as LG U+, KT and SK, the three major telecommunication corporations in Korea, are making improvements to their LTE and LTE-A services to gain market advantage. LG U+ looks to provide a broadband LTE network for their LTE and LTE-A service users which will double the download and upload speed from their existing service. New LG U+ service is expected to be offered to Seoul and other capital areas first, and then move to metropolitan cities by March 2013 and nationwide by July 2014.
In July 2011, LG U+ launched the LTE service, and within 9 months, they were the world’s first to construct a nationwide LTE service. LG U+ which has already constructed the LTE nationwide 800MHz service and LTE-A 2.1 GHz service, will add another frequency to have the most LTE frequencies among the telecommunication companies in Korea. With three LTE frequencies as their groundwork, LG U+ is planning to tie all the LTE frequencies to provide next generation’s world’s fastest LTE network reaching maximum speed of 300Mbps.
First, LG U+ looks to provide speeds of 225Mbps by combining the existing LTE frequency with broadband LTE for, two-band CA (Carrier Aggregation). As the construction of 2.6GHz frequency broadband LTE service already in plan, in March 2013 three LTE frequencies of 800MHz, 2.1GHz, and broadband LTE will be available for use.
With the combination of 80MHz LTE frequency with the existing two frequencies, a maximum 300Mbps LTE service will be made available for a three-band CA service. The three-band MC (Multi Carrier) service for LG U+ will be an advantage as it can divide data traffic to the three frequencies. The two-band CA and three-band CA is planned to be provided first by LG U+ in Korea.
LG U+ states that full service of LTE service can be experienced by other telecommunication may be difficult if there is a plethora of LTE service users on their frequency. With the multiple frequencies LG U+ gained, even with an increase in LTE service users, they will be able to provide optimum LTE quality as they can distribute the data traffic into the three channels.
Furthermore, other telecommunication networks with their strategy to combine their existing frequencies will be able to provide broadband LTE service nationwide but their service will likely not affect the upload speed which will not accelerate higher than 25 Mbps. However, with the usage of multiple frequencies for LTE service, it is likely to take a toll on the battery life of the cellular phones using the network.
GSA Report states, out of 70 countries using the LTE service, France, Germany, Sweden, Japan Singapore and etc, are among the 27 countries that are using the 2.6GHz frequency which totals to 52 telecommunication companies. Furthermore, out of the variety of cellular phones that are available in the world, 362 phones are made for the 2.6 GHz frequency in comparison to 322 phones that are made for the 1.8 GHz frequency LTE.
With the usage of 2.6 GHz frequency, LG U+ will accommodate the different preferences people have in selection of cellular phones than telecommunication corporations using the 1.8 GHz frequency LTE.
With the upgrade of LTE service to broadband LTE service, the data usages among LTE users will likely increase and as a consequence the burden of the service fee for customers will likely increase together. With this foreseen, LG U+ will provide a special data service fee to offset the launch of a faster LTE service. With the launch of the new LTE service, two data plans will be provided. ‘100 LTE Data pack’ service plan will provide 2GB of data daily for a total of 62 GB monthly for 10,000 KRW per month and ‘100% LTE 24 hour unlimited data’ for 2,500 KRW.
