SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) today held a press conference to announce plans to further strengthen its market leadership through the best network quality, differentiated mobile value-added services, and customer-oriented programs.
 
On August 30, 2013, the company gained authorization to operate the 35 MHz bandwidth (20 downlink + 15 uplink) in the 1.8 GHz band. With wider LTE bandwidth, the company will be able to offer 20 MHz downlink LTE service that supports up to 150 Mbps speed. All LTE-Advanced devices will operate on the wider LTE bandwidth, while users of 20 existing LTE devices including Vega Racer 2, Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5 will be able to enjoy 100 Mbps over the LTE network without having to pay any extra fees. SK Telecom will begin offering LTE service using wider spectrum channels in the Seoul Metropolitan Area within the end of 2013 and secure nationwide coverage by July 2014.
 
Moreover, based on its strong technological capability in cutting-edge network technologies such as Carrier Aggregation (LTE-Advanced) and extensive knowhow in network operation, SK Telecom plans to combine its bandwidths in the 1.8 GHz (20 MHz bandwidth) and 800 MHz (10 MHz) spectrums to offer up to 225 Mbps speed by next year. 
 
Meanwhile, since launching the world’s first LTE-Advanced service by aggregating 800 MHz band (10 downlink + 10 uplink) and 1.8 GHz band (10 downlink + 10 uplink) on June 26, 2013, SK Telecom has been making aggressive efforts to expand its LTE-Advanced coverage to meet customers’ demand for faster Internet connectivity. As a result, SK Telecom’s seamless LTE-Advanced service became available in central areas of 84 cities nationwide as of July 30, 2013. Furthermore, the company plans to build a total of 32,000 units of LTE-Advanced base stations by the end of this year to cover more areas of the 84 cities as well as 300 universities across the nation.
 
SK Telecom today also unveiled its plans to introduce diverse products and services that take advantage of the ultra-fast speed of the LTE and LTE-Advanced networks to meet customers’ increasing need for rich data contents.
 
In September, SK Telecom will launch a new data plan named ‘T Life Pack’ that allow customers to enjoy up to 140 hours of video per month. At monthly price of KRW 9,000, it provides 2GB of data every day, which results in a monthly total of around 62 GB. Moreover, to boost cost-efficient use of data for customers, it is preparing to launch a data plan that offer special rates that differ by time, as well as a new program that provides benefits to families who use SK Telecom. 
 
The company will also continue to develop and launch high-quality, large volume multimedia services. So far, SK Telecom has launched a wide variety of differentiated mobile value added services, including B tv mobile, T Baseball Multiview, T Freemium 2.0 and T Shopping, which are specially designed for its LTE and LTE-Advanced networks. (Please refer to Table 1)  Going forward, SK Telecom plans to launch ‘T Sports (tentatively named)’, which provides live broadcast and highlights of professional sports games in October 2013.
 
“Together with SK Telecom’s LTE-Advanced network that already covers central areas of 84 cities nationwide, our 20 MHz downlink LTE service will allow more customers to experience and benefit from the ultra fast mobile data environment. Moreover, with the ultimate goal of realizing the combined use all our LTE bandwidths, we are currently focusing on developing next-generation network technologies,” said Park In-sik, President and Head of Network Operations Business of SK Telecom. “In parallel with our effort to improve network quality, we will continue to offer innovative and differentiated LTE/LTE-Advanced products and services to maximize customer value and satisfaction.”