SK Telecom

SK Telecom and Ericsson join forces to dominate the global LTE-Advanced market in advance.

The two companies signed a technological cooperation agreement to this end with each other on February 24 in Barcelona, Spain. According to it, they will jointly develop technologies related to LTE-A services while strengthening their cooperation in the field of small cell. A small cell is a sort of micro base station which complements existing base stations for stable telecom services. Using it, data traffic can be spread effectively and investment efficiency can be raised significantly.

SK Telecom and Ericsson developed Super Cell 1.0, a small cell technology which organizes small and large base stations into one virtual cell to prevent the loss of communications in boundary zones, and demonstrated it at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) underway there. The former is planning to apply the technology to its LTE-A networks in the latter half of this year. “It is expected that the decrease in the data transmission speed in certain regions will be properly addressed once Super Cell 1.0 is put into operation,” said Choi Jin-sung, who is heading the SK Telecom Research Institute, adding, “The technological cooperation between Korea’s largest mobile carrier and the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer will result in different LTE-A services far superior to those of competitors.”

In the meantime, the number of small base stations is increasing rapidly around the world these days. According to UK-based market research firm Informa, the number is estimated to more than double from 6.5 million to 15 million between 2012 and 2013 before reaching 91 million by 2016.

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