SEOUL: Korea’s major telecommunication service company KT said on June 16 that it is set to commercialize the world’s fastest mobile network, called Giga-LTE, which combines the current Long Term Evolution networks with Wi-Fi connections. The new technology offers gigabyte speeds to users, taking a step closer to a next-generation 5G network.
The new network service realizes a peak speed of 1.17 Gbps – 15 times faster than existing LTE and four times faster than the tri-band LTE-Advanced, which is the latest 4G technology that has combined three different frequencies and fastest wireless networking methods currently available in Korea.
KT said users would be able to download an 18 GB ultra high-definition (UHD) movie in about 126 seconds and 100 music files that amount to about 3 GBs within 21 seconds. It took at least 28 seconds for existing 3-band LTE-Advanced and 38 seconds for the broadband LTE-Advanced to download 1 GB of data.
The new network service will first be offered to Samsung Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge users starting this week, and gradually be expanded to other smartphones. Users can upgrade their mobile network to the Giga-LTE via a free firmware upgrade.
KT has been working with Samsung Electronics to develop the Giga-LTE service since last September.
The mobile carrier is going to open a “5G Test Bed” in July in the KT R&D center in Seoul, which will be a driving force to secure more 5G technologies and the pre-occupancy of its standardization. The company plans to provide trial service first for the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics to be held in Korea.
In the meantime, SK Telecom announced early last month that it had succeeded in using LTE and Wi-Fi networks together, and will soon be ready for commercialization.
Korean mobile carriers have been eager to take leadership in the commercialization of 3-band carrier aggregation technology, which is considered a prerequisite phase to the next-generation 5G network.
