SK Telecom continues to push the boundaries of LTE, announcing that it has successfully developed the first tri-band LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation (CA) technology.
The company has unveiled technology that aggregates three bands – 20MHz from one, and 10MHz from the other two – to achieve downlink speeds of up to 300Mbps.
But SK Telecom is not stopping there, announcing plans to demonstrate 450MHz LTE-A through the aggregation of three 20MHz carriers at Mobile World Congress 2014 in February.
The global standardization process for LTE-A three-band CA is underway, and the standard is expected to be ready for commercial service by the end of 2014.
SK Telecom launched the world's first commercial LTE-A network in June last year.
In November, the company demonstrated the 225Mbps LTE-A service it plans to launch this year, as a stopgap measure until devices and chipsets that support 300Mbps speeds are available. That same month, the UK's EE launched the first LTE-A network capable of delivering 300Mbps speeds.