SEOUL, KOREA - SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) announced today that it won Small Cell Industry Awards for two years in a row. At this year's Small Cell Industry Awards held in London, the company's LTE femtocell received two honorable awards in the categories of 'Commercial Deployment - Innovation in Commercial Deployment' and 'Small Cell Network Element Design and Technology Innovation.'
*Femtocell: A small cellular base station designed for use in residential or small business environments.
The Small Cell Industry Awards, the world’s most prestigious award in the field of femtocell, recognizes outstanding contributions to the femtocell industry. Small Cell Forum, the organizer of Femtocell Industry Awards,is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 2007 to enable and promote small cell technology worldwide. The Small Cell Forum membership has over 140 members including 68 mobile operators worldwide such as SK Telecom, Vodafone, AT&T and NTT Docomo, as well as telecoms hardware and software vendors, content providers and innovative start-ups.
Since commercializing LTE femtocell in June 2012 for the first time in the world, the company has been focusing on developing technologies that can strongly support and enhance the performance of its core LTE femtocell.
SK Telecom added Femto Remote Solution (FRS) and X2 Interface: FRS covers medium-large sized buildings (advanced type of public femtocell) with significantly reduced interference by connecting up to 16 cells; and X2 Interference increases success rate of handover using Femtocell Gateway (FGW).
SK Telecom also connected LTE femtocells to its Centralized Self-Organizing Network (SON) to enable integrated management of multi-radio access technologies such as WCDMA and LTE provided by diverse vendors. Moreover, considering that LTE femtocells have lower capacity than macro cells, the company also added a feature that prioritizes HD Voice (VoLTE) over other services in times of traffic surges.
With the development and application of advanced LTE small cell technologies, SK Telecom is offering seamless data services and differentiated VoLTE service to over 10 million LTE subscribers.
Choi Jing-sung, Executive Vice President and Head of ICT R&D Division of SK Telecom said, “The award is recognition of SK Telecom’s strenuous efforts to further enhance customers’ mobile experience. With the application of innovative small cell technologies, we are offering service of the highest reliability in all LTE coverage areas. We will also continue to make efforts to realize next-generation mobile technologies, including LTE Advanced, to maximize customer value and benefits.”
