According to the recently amended Telecommunication Business Act (Article 56-2), telecommunication service providers now are required to release information needed for their subscribers to select wired and wireless Internet service, including which areas are covered, how service is provided, etc. To comply with the regulation, on the 28th of July, the South Korea’s big 3 operators ha...

The big 3 operators in South Korea, ST Telecom, KT and LG U+, each with a global standard oneM2M-certified IoT platform, are now aiming for global market. There is much attention in the industry towards which platform provider can build more partnerships with SMEs and startups, which is essential to present new, distruptive ideas and services. In order for the operators to expand the marke...

On March 18th, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP), a ministry of South Korean government, finally revealed its plan to hold a much overdue auction for mobile spectrum at the end of April, in 2 years and 8 months after the last one in August 2013. At the auction, a total of 140 MHz (2x70 MHz) across 5 blocks will be offered. Each of the Korean big 3 operators will have a cha...

For the rest of the Q3 2015 issue of Korea Communication Review magazine please click here In its second demonstration of LTE in Unlicensed spectrum ("LTE-U", LAA in 3GPP term) conducted last month - 7 months after its first demonstration where it showed 300 Mbps through CA of 20 MHz at 2.6 GHz and another 20 MHz at 5.8 GHz, LG U+ successfully achieved 600 Mbps through carrier aggregation (C...

LG U+'s IPTV service 1. Live TV 1.1 Basic channel 1.2 Multiview: operator-selected channels 1.3 Personalized Multiview: user-selected channels ► 2. VoD 2.1 UHD VoD: Encoding rate and streaming of 4K UHD VoD content LG U+ began UHD (3840x2160) VoD service in October 2014 (no UHD channel available yet, though). When it comes to UHD service,...

LG U+'s IPTV service ►1. Live TV 1.1 Basic channel 1.2 Multiview: operator-selected channels 1.3 Personalized Multiview: user-selected channels 2. VoD 2.1 UHD VoD: Encoding rate and streaming of 4K UHD VoD content LG U+, with its competitors KT and SK Broadband, presented Live TV service (real-time retransmission of broadcast channels ov...

For the rest of the Q3 2015 issue of Korea Communication Review magazine please click here Hear from CTO of Korean Telcos 1. Dr. Dongmyun Lee, CTO of KT: Leading 5G through wired/wireless Integration ► 2. Mr. Changwoo Lee, CTO of LG U+: LG U+'s Mobile Network Evolution Strategies 3. Dr. Jingsung Choi, CTO of SK Telecom: SK Telecom's 5G Evolution Strategies...

For the rest of the Q2 2015 issue of Korea Communication Review magazine please click here SKT and LG U+ to create more customer value, and KT to lead technology innovation through standardization...

As noted in the previous post, currently there are two types of user authentication in the Wi-Fi networks operated by Korean operators: IEEE 802.1X-based and captive portal-based authentication. 802.1X-based authentication targets primarily mobile devices with an operator's USIM card, whereas captive portal-based authentication to be discussed here is used to attract users without a permane...

We will talk about call flow in IEEE 802.1X-based user authentication used in Korean network operators' Wi-Fi networks. Before we continue, let's take a look at what Korean operators' current Wi-Fi authentication are like first. KT provides the following SSIDs in its Wi-Fi Hotspots: ollehWiFi (with lock icon): Users are authenticated based on the IMSI stored in USIM of their...

For the rest of the Q1 2015 issue of Korea Communication Review magazine please click here 3. 5G Strategies by LG U+ LG U+, acknowledging service as a more important factor in 5G than speed, is putting more efforts into developing differentiated services than mere technologies competition. That is, it is taking a stance that it would develop 5G services first, and then take care of t...

This article was published in Korea Communication Review magazine (KCR Q1 2015). For the rest of the Q1 2015 issue of Korea Communication Review magazine please click here The 'giga Internet era' has just begun, finally offering speeds of 1 Gbps - 10 times faster than the 100Mbps. For the past 7 ~ 8 years, the maximum Internet speeds for all access networks (FTTH, LAN and XDS...

This article was published in Korea Communication Review magazine (KCR Q1 2015). For the rest of the Q1 2015 issue of Korea Communication Review magazine please click here 1. What is "LTE-Unlicensed"? And what's the big deal about it? 2. Korean Operators' Position (KT, SK Telecom and LG U+) 3. Discussion on Regulatory Requirements 4. LTE Advocates vs. Wi-Fi Advocates 1. W...

LG U+ unveiled its gigabit Internet access network solution at the World IT Show 2014 held in Busan on October 20th. The new solution is said to be capable of supporting bidirectional Internet speed of 1 Gbps per user. Unlike its competitors, KT or SKB, the company offers LAN, FTTH and HFC services only, and not XDSL. At the show, LG U+ gave a demonstration of the technology and equipment...

In the past two years, some new technologies have been introduced in Korea, apparently increasing broadband Internet speeds 3~5 times faster, from 100 Mbps to 300~500 Mbps, instantly. It certainly is fascinating in that such speed improvement was achieved without the hassle of re-cabling construction in apartment buildings. Because 100 Mbps had seemed unbeatable for almost a decade, this sure w...

In our previous post (Analysis of LG U+'s HDTV Streaming (LG U+ HDTV Service based on LTE-A), we discussed how LG U+ Mobile U+ HDTV service delivers video files to a device. Our first actual measurement confirmed that LG U+: used HLS, Apple's adaptive streaming (delivering video files chunkwise, unlike progressive download or RTMP/RTSP); and offered three profiles (quality levels)...

On June 10, 2013, LG U+ launched U+ HDTV multi-channel service (U+ tv G 4 Channel Service) that enables users to watch 4 channels at the same time through home STB. Later in July, it introduced the same multi-channel service in a mobile version based on LTE-A. In this post, we will analyze the U+ HDTV streaming on mobile devices that support LTE-A. U+ HDTV service offers two viewing experi...

As noted in our previous post, we will present you workflow that shows how a YouTube video is downloaded to an LG U+ subscriber device via Google Global Caches installed in the LG U+ Internet. First, we will discuss the case when LG U+ Google servers have a video that has been requested by a subscriber (Cache Hit). Then, we will discuss the case when none of the servers have it (Cache Miss)....