SK Telecom reports 17.44 million LTE subscribers; up 18% since last year
South Korea’s largest mobile telephony operator SK Telecom reached 17.44 million subscribers in the LTE segment by the end of the first quarter of 2015, climbing 18.1% compared to the same time a year ago, according to the operator’s latest quarterly report.
During the quarter, SK Telecom recorded a net addition of 710,000 LTE subscribers with the technology accounting for 61.5% of its overall mobile subscriber base, an increase of 8.4 percentage points compared to the end of March 2014.
SK Telecom invested a total of $225 million in Q1, up 20.5% compared to Q1 2014 and down 58.8% compared to the previous quarter.
The operator launched the first LTE service in South Korea in July 2011. SK Telecom also commercialized LTE-Advanced services touting 150 megabit-per-second speeds in June 2013, and 225 Mbps speeds in June 2014 through carrier aggregation.
By the end of last year, SK Telecom continued to improve its LTE offering with the commercial launch of its tri-band LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation service. SK Telecom’s tri-band LTE-A service offers data speeds of up to 300 Mbps by aggregating three component carriers in three different frequency bands: 20-megahertz bandwidth in the 1.8 GHz band, 10-megahertz bandwidth in the 800 MHz band and 10-megahertz bandwidth in the 2.1 GHz band.
According to the company’s quarterly report, SK Telecom deployed a total of 26,000 2.1 GHz base stations by the end of March, and is currently providing tri-band LTE-A service in capital city Seoul and its metropolitan area as well as in the central areas of 85 cities across South Korea.
The company has recently unveiled its new growth strategy, which is based on a customer-centric approach. Under the new strategy, SK Telecom is focusing on three next-generation platforms, namely Lifestyle Enhancement Platform, Advanced Media Platform and IoT Service Platform.
“Besides achieving stronger performance in the network operation business, we will secure a new growth momentum through our three next-generation platforms,” the operator’s CFO Lee Yong-hwan said.
