5G Commercialization
Two local mobile carriers have successfully commercialized a tri-band LTE-A service, four times faster than existing LTE services.
SK Telecom and KT announced on Dec. 28 that they finalized the preparation for a tri-band LTE-A service, and will let a group of consumers or college students test the speed and quality of the service. The Galaxy Note 4 was chosen as the first tri-band LTE-A phone.
The service uses Tri-band Carrier Aggregation (CA) technology, which can achieve peak speeds of 300 Mbps by aggregating three different frequency bands. Tri-band CA is four times faster than LTE and 21 times faster than 3G. Hence, only 28 seconds is needed to download a 1GB movie.
The nation has reconfirmed that it is a leading country in the ICT sector by commercializing the tri-band LTE-A service this time, after LTE-A in June 2013 and Broadband LTE-A in June 2014.
If this service expands to the rest of the world, it is expected to greatly help the local ICT ecosystem for terminals, communications equipment, and content strengthen its competitiveness.
On top of that, experts are saying that the industry has taken a step toward 4 or 5-band LTE-A services and the commercialization of 5G, for which major ICT powerhouses like the U.S., the E.U., China, and Japan are mounting a serious challenge to Korea's domination.