SK Telecom to Commercialize LTE-A Network in Second Half of 2013

SK Telecom has announced new period of "LTE 2.0" defined by innovative LTE services including High-quality communication services, industrial productivity-improving solutions and lifestyle-enhancing LTE services. Operator plans to commercialize high quality VoLTE service in the third quarter of 2012 and aims to commercialize 150 Mbps LTE-A network technology in the second half of 2013 with commercialization of Carrier Aggregation (CA).

The operator declares that it now world's second largest LTE service provider in just a year since launching commercial LTE service in July 2011 and expects to surpass 3.4 million LTE subscribers by the end of June. Based on the fast growth rate of LTE subscribers, it supposes the number of increasing LTE subscribers to go above 7 million by the end of 2012.

The company said it will lead LTE network evolution by covering 99% of the population with its LTE network by June and will commercialize Multi Carrier (MC) on July 1. It will use both its existing 800MHz frequency band and the 1.8GHz band it newly acquired in the second half of last year. It will be using a total of 40MHz for its LTE services, with an additional 20MHz uplink/downlink spectrum,

Operator plans to guide communication service innovation in an all-IP environment where voice and data are incorporated. It will be introduce Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and Rich Communication Suite (RCS) to provide customers with high quality call and messaging services. According to operator, compared to the existing 3G voice call, it proposes up to 2.2 times better sound quality and twice faster call connection speed.

The company plans to launch its RCS service in the second half of this year after building a detailed service structure and billing systems.

http://lteworld.org/news/sk-telecom-commercialize-lte-network-second-half-2013