Pie in the Sky

Samsung Galaxy S8 models.
Samsung Galaxy S8 models.

 

The Samsung Galaxy S8, which makes its debut on April 21, has a communication speed of up to 1 Gbps. This speed, however, is unlikely to be available for Galaxy S8 users in South Korea as South Korean mobile carriers have yet to be equipped with network facilities compatible with it.

At present, their network environments provide a maximum speed of 600 Mbps in theory, which is available only in major cities. In smaller cities, the maximum speed rarely exceeds 300 Mbps. SK Telecom, KT and LG U+ are currently testing the Galaxy S8 provided by Samsung Electronics.

The Galaxy S8 comes with Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 and Samsung Exynos 8995. Each of the application processors supports carrier aggregation, which allows data to be transmitted and received at a high speed based on the utilization of different frequency bands as a single wideband frequency. The other existing application processors use up to three different frequency bands as a single wideband frequency whereas those in the Galaxy S8 use four as one. This is the reason for its higher theoretical maximum speed.

According to the South Korean mobile carriers, they are currently capable of supporting the four-band carrier aggregation but it takes time for them to reach 1 Gbps and the available speed differs from region to region. This is because each of them currently has three to four LTE frequency bands and not all of the bands are in use in nationwide networks. Specifically, they are using their main frequency bands in nationwide networks and the other frequency bands in auxiliary networks. They can provide the four-band carrier aggregation by using both the main and auxiliary networks in population centers, where they have to distribute data traffic, but available auxiliary networks are insufficient in smaller cities, islands and mountain areas with less population.
 

Copyright © BusinessKorea. Prohibited from unauthorized reproduction and redistribution