LG U+

 

On September 12, LG U+ announced its plans to build a broadband LTE network, release a new data-specific phone plan, and upgrade to a 100% LTE service.

Prior to this, LG U+ beat the two other domestic mobile carriers and secured the largest bandwidth in the 2.6GHz range, standardized for global LTE, through a frequency auction held in August. It can now provide its customers with a broadband LTE service that is twice as fast at both downloading and uploading. 

LG U+ now has the most LTE frequencies among the three domestic mobile carriers, including the highest-quality national LTE network at 800MHz, the LTE-A network at 2.1GHz, and its basic LTE network. It plans to build the world’s fastest next-generation LTE network by uniting these networks. On the same day, LG U+ SC Director Lee Chang-woo said, “LG U+ will continue to lead the LTE market by building the fastest and most stable broadband LTE, following the world’s best 100% LTE network and the 84 LTE-A networks across the nation.”

LG U+ will quickly and stably complete its nationwide broadband LTE network based on its expertise gained in completing the world’s first nationwide LTE network nine months after the service launched in July 2011.

In addition, LG U+ plans to expand its current LTE-A coverage in 84 regions to the entire nation, including major cities, and start providing broadband LTE service in Seoul and nearby major cities by the end of this year, then in the suburban regions by March 2014, and nation-wide by July 2014.

LG U+ is the only mobile carrier among the three in Korea which secured the 40MHz broadband frequency, allowing a maximum of 50Mbps for uploading. It also has the largest 80MHz LTE frequency among the carriers as well, allowing its customers to feel the service speed.

Other carriers secured frequencies which do not cover certain regions across the nation, meaning that their upload speed will remain at the current LTE speed of 25Mbps, even if they complete the broadband LTE network construction. Also, they can only provide the broadband LTE service through the current 1.8GHz network, even when additional LTE users increase data traffic, making it difficult for both the current and new customers to actually feel the speed difference in the broadband LTE network.

LG U+ plans to provide a so-called “next generation LTE service” with a faster speed by uniting the various networks, including the broadband LTE service.

First, once the 2.6GHz broadband LTE nationwide network construction is complete, LG U+ will connect it to the current 800MHz and 2.1GHz LTE networks by March next year to start a service called “3 Band Multi Carrier (MC),” which distributes data traffic to these three frequencies, providing the best quality LTE even if LTE users increase rapidly.

In addition, it will unite its original LTE network and broadband LTE network in July next year, when the nationwide broadband LTE network begins full scale service, providing a “2 Band Carrier Aggregation (CA)” at a maximum of 225 Mbps. By 2015, it plans to release Korea’s first “3 Band CA” with a speed of 300Mbps by uniting the three 80MHz LTE frequencies in total.

Also, LG U+ will add a large variety of customer-friendly features to the 100% LTE core services, such as U+HDTV and U+Navi LTE. Accordingly, U+HDTV, a mobile TV feature, will use the accumulated customer service use patterns to provide a customized content list service based on big data, and improve its current HD definition to Full HD (1920x1080) to provide a clearer picture and captions sometime within September.

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