Telecom Lead Asia: SK Telecom says it achieved 10 million 4G / LTE users in 21 months, whereas its first 10 million 3G users came in 37 months.
SK Telecom exceeded the 10 million subscriber mark in one year and nine months after launching Korea’s first LTE service in July 2011.
The company, which posted KRW 16.301 trillion in revenue in 2012, took three years and one month to acquire 10 million 3G WCDMA subscribers since commercializing the service in May 2006.
SK Telecom expects to reach 15 million LTE subscribers by the end of 2013.
Also, the company plans to commercialize LTE-Advanced in September to provide customer with faster and more reliable services.
“SK Telecom has been able to achieve rapid popularization of LTE through the introduction of ground-breaking LTE technologies and services,” said Jang Dong-hyun, executive vice president and head of Marketing Division of SK Telecom.
As of April 2013, the company’s LTE subscribers take up 37 percent of its total mobile subscriber base, expanding nearly 16 fold compared to the end of November 2011 when it reported 630,000 LTE subscribers, accounting for 2.4 percent of the total.
In addition, the proportion of LTE subscribers among the company’s total mobile subscriber base is currently the highest in the world.
SK Telecom has completed nationwide LTE deployment covering 99 percent of the nation’s population in July 2012 and is providing seamless LTE coverage in underground and in-building areas as well as mountainous region, and coastal/island/marine areas.
The company has developed and applied LTE technologies like Multi Carrier, LTE Femtocell, Downlink CoMP (Coordinated Multi-Point) and SON (Self-Organizing Network) – all of which were commercialized by SK Telecom for the first time in the world – to further enhance its network speed and quality.
SK Telecom has developed diverse value-added services specially designed and optimized for the LTE network in order to bring a differentiated experience for its customers.
The company has launched T Freemium to allow customers to enjoy multimedia contents free of charge; T Baseball/T Basketball, a real-time professional baseball/basketball game broadcast service that comes with diverse useful features; and B TV Mobile, a mobile IPTV service that provides around 40 channels and over 13,000 VOD contents.
SK Telecom offers 33 LTE devices including 25 smartphones, 5 tablet PCs, 2 USB modems, and 1 LTE-capable camera.
