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...

During the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, 5G pilot service will be offered by means of 8-band CA that combines 8 100MHz carriers, supporting over 10Gbps on devices - more than 33 times faster than the current LTE's maximum 300Mbps. The drastic speed improvement will make features like 360 degree realistic videos, realistic content services powered by VR and AR, etc. a reality. In additio...

[Issue analysis-1] IoST era begins with initiatives for a nationwide IoT network deployment IoT, the next generation growth engine in the mobile communication industry, is finally unveiled. South Korea-based SK Telecom and KT, geared up with cutting-edge IoT technologies including LoRa, LTE-M, and NB IoT, etc., are to be in fierce competition to deploy the nation's (and world's) fir...

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...

Around this time of year, network operators and vendors are in fierce competition in introducing innovative next generation technologies and services with Mobile World Congress (MWC) fast approaching. This year, KT and SK Telecom have already been battling to present the world's first 5G technologies and services faster. On February 15th, with the MWC 2016 just one week away, Mr. Sun...

KT announced that it succeeded in commercialization of the world’s first wireless 1 Giga service, called “GiGA LTE". The service is known to have achieved speeds 15 times faster than the current LTE, through combining two heterogeneous networks: LTE and WiFi. Previously, the company has released “GiGA Internet” in October 2014, and “GiGA WiFi Home” in March 2...

KT IPTV (4K UHD) Service (1) UHD Live TV (2) 'Most Popular Channels Now' (9-Channel View) (3) 4-channel View (4) UHD VoD Success or failure of UHD service lies in how much UHD contents the service provided can offer. Being well aware of that, KT has gradually secured more contents, for example, through upscaling of Full HD movies to UHD quality (e.g. 'The Admiral: Roarin...

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...

KT IPTV (4K UHD) Service (1) UHD Live TV (2) 'Most Popular Channels Now' (9-Channel View) (3) 4-channel View (4) UHD VoD KT also offers 4-channel view service. This service is pretty similar to LG U+'s and has the following two options: Operator-selected channels: Offers a set of 4 channels selected by operator (sports, shopping, over-the-air and movies). User-selected...

KT IPTV (4K UHD) Service (1) UHD Live TV (2) 'Most Popular Channels Now' (9-Channel View) (3) 4-channel View (4) UHD VoD You probably have been switching channels, looking for something interesting to watch, until you finally settle down for one. For viewers like you, KT offers a new way of selecting channels through a service called "Most Popular Channels Now". At the company...

KT IPTV (4K UHD) Service (1) UHD Live TV (2) 'Most Popular Channels Now' (9-Channel View) (3) 4-channel View (4) UHD VoD KT launched the world's first UHD IPTV service in September 2014. Now it has over 100,000 subscribers as of April 2015, closing trailing LG U+ who has attracted around 125,000 UHD subscribers over the same period of time. What differentiates KT's UHD...

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...