KT Kicks Off its LTE Network

KT has launched commercial LTE services in five districts in Seoul. KT is using the 1.8 GHz band ((2 X 10MHz)) and promising top theoretical downlink speeds of 75 Mbps. 2G services using this spectrum are being terminated.


Samsung's Galaxy S II LTE and the Pantech Vega LTE are among the handsets initially on offer. The carrier aims to attract 4 million LTE subscribers in 2012.


By the end of March, KT's LTE network is expected to cover 26 cities and by the end of April, the network will cover 92% of South Korea's population. Overall, KT expects to invest KRW 1.3 trillion for the nationwide LTE and the majority of this spending is expected in the first half of the year.


KT is leveraging "LTE WARP" technology to share resources among up to 144 base stations. Cloud and virtualization technologies are also being employed to improve network capacity while minimizing radio wave interference between cell units.
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