SK Telecom has commercialized five-band Carrier Aggregation (CA) and 4X4 MIMO, which are key technologies of LTE-A Pro.
LTE-A Pro technology enhances data transmission speed and performance by aggregating five component carriers. SK Telecom has 10MHz bandwidth in the 800MHz band, 20MHz bandwidth in the 1.8GHz band, 10MHz bandwidth in the 2.1GHz band, 10MHz + 20 MHz bandwidths in the 2.6Ghz band.
SK Telecom’s five-band CA LTE-A Pro service supports up to 700Mbps data rates, enabling users to download an HD movie (2GB) within 23 seconds. The five-band CA LTE-A Pro service currently covers 53 cities in Korea, including Seoul, Busan and Daegu.
The Korean telecom operator has also launched the 900Mbps LTE-A Pro service by combining three-band/ four-band CA and 4X4 MIMO. The 900Mbps LTE-A Pro service currently covers main areas of six major cities namely Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Gwangju, Daejeon and Ulsan.
Samsung Galaxy S8 users can access LTE-A Pro services via an over-the-air firmware upgrade.
SK Telecom plans to expand the coverage of its LTE-A Pro services: It expects that the five-band CA LTE-A Pro service and 900Mbps LTE-A Pro service, when combined, will cover more than 50 percent of the Korean population by the end of this year.
By combining five-band CA or four-band CA with other key LTE-A Pro technologies like 4X4 MIMO, SK Telecom plans to launch 1 Gbps LTE-A Pro service in the first half of 2018. The company is applying key LTE-A Pro technologies, including five-band CA, 4X4 MIMO, and 256 QAM, to its base stations nationwide.
“SK Telecom’s LTE-A Pro services represent an early application of 5G technologies that support Gbps-level data speeds and massive network capacity,” said Choi, Seung-won, Head of Infrastructure Strategy Office at SK Telecom.
