KT Corp commercializes world’s fastest LTE offering speeds upto 1.17 Gbps to mobile network services in South Korea
On Monday, the country’s largest telecommunications firm, South Korea’s KT Corp., announced that it would be commercializing the world’s fastest mobile network, called the Giga LTE, which merges the current Long Term Evolution networks with Wi-Fi connections.
This new network service will provide a maximum download speed of 1.17 Gbps, which is already 15 times faster than the existing LTE and also quite fast in comparison to other LTE networks elsewhere. It is also four times faster than the current fastest network in their market, the tri-band broadband LTE-Advanced. In addition, it also gives up to 10 times faster the upload speed than that of LTE-A.
By having the Giga LTE will further distinguish the mobile carrier from its competitors and will give them the competitive edge in the race to bring the 5G network for the first time in the South Korean market, thereby, increasing technological advances in the mobile industry.
At a press meeting in Seoul, Head of KT’s network division, Oh Sung-mok said “The Giga LTE is a high-end technology that is two or three years ahead of its time.”
“KT will spare no efforts to develop faster and more stable mobile technologies for customers,” he added.
They currently have 200,000 LTE base stations and 140,000 Wi-Fi hotspots installed all over the country. It also has plans to enlarge the coverage of the Giga LTE services in the coming years to make room for the increasing data traffic.
According to KT, the mobile data traffic is expected to increase up to 1,000 times by 2020, as the 5G networks when put into effect in earnest and futuristic technologies such as UHD hologram services and 8K video content will become unusual.
KT Corp has actually collaborated with the smartphone-maker Samsung Electronics for the past nine months to develop the Giga LTE technology.
With firmware updates to be available from Tuesday, the users of Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge will actually be some of the first to experience the faster LTE services, according to a KT official.
“Around five to six more high-end and mid-end Samsung handsets, compatible with the GiGA LTE, will be released in the latter half of this year along with some LG Electronics handsets,” the KT official said.
The commercialization of the Giga LTE services came after Hang Chang-gyu, Chairman of KT Corp announced in May last year that the company would set up the wired and mobile GiGA communications infrastructure of the highest quality.
Looks like KT Corp would have to work faster to establish this new tech, as the South Korea’s largest mobile carrier SK Telecom and LG Uplus also announced on the same day that they would commercializing their mobile network technologies this month with aggregate LTE and Wi-Fi networks to offer faster mobile services.
