SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) today announced that successfully tested LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) five-band carrier aggregation (CA)* on its commercial network

*SK Telecom’s bandwidth resources as of February 2017: 10MHz bandwidth in the 800MHz band, 20MHz bandwidth in the 1.8GHz band, 10MHz bandwidth in the 2.1GHz band, 10MHz + 20 MHz bandwidths in the 2.6Ghz band

Since June 1, 2016, SK Telecom has been providing 500Mbps LTE-A Pro service by applying 256 QAM technology to its tri-band LTE-A CA network. Also, the company has acquired additional spectrum in the 2.6GHz band in May 2017, securing the basis for LTE-A five-band CA.

In addition, SK Telecom has successfully demonstrated the application of MIMO to its tri-band CA network, thereby securing the capability to provide 900Mbps data speeds.

With the application of 4X4 MIMO - a technology that doubles the transmission speed - to a 20MHz bandwidth of a frequency band, users will be able to download data at maximum rate of 400Mbps per frequency band.

SK Telecom and Samsung Electronics are demonstrating this LTE-A Pro technology at Samsung booth during the MWC period, and plan to commercialize it within the first half of 2017.

"Through the demonstration of LTE-A Pro with SK Telecom, we have proven that it is not long before we realize the commercialization of 1Gbps mobile communication, a dream speed in LTE," said Park Dong-soo, Executive Vice President of the Network Business at Samsung Electronics. "We will lead the advancement of mobile technologies toward the very last stage of LTE evolution and secure a bridgehead into the 5G era."

Meanwhile, SK Telecom also announced that it, together with Ericsson, successfully demonstrated Licensed Assisted Access (LAA), the technology that uses unlicensed spectrum together with licensed spectrum for 4G LTE radio communication. By aggregating up to 80MHz in licensed and unlicensed spectrum and applying 4X4 MIMO technology, peak data rates of 1Gbps is achievable. The two companies are demonstrating the technology at Ericsson booth during MWC 2017.

Per Narvinger, Head of Product Area Network Systems at Ericsson said “With LAA, subscribers will be able to enjoy an even better LTE experience as unlicensed spectrum is used to boost data speeds. The LTE and Wi-Fi users will coexist in a fair way in the unlicensed bands and end users will benefit in indoor as well as outdoor environments.”

“With continued advancement of UHD video and virtual reality technology, there is growing a need for faster mobile telecommunications services,” said Park Jin-hyo, Senior Vice President and Head of Network Technology R&D Center of SK Telecom. “SK Telecom will pursue ceaseless innovations in not only 5G, but also in LTE-A Pro so as to provide our customers with the world’s best mobile experience.”