World's first turbocharged 4G network lands in Korea

Galaxy S4 LTE-A
A whole new network to make the Galaxy S4 LTE-A official...

With leaked photos popping up online, we all knew that a 4G LTE-Advanced Galaxy S4 was coming, and now SK Telecom has announced that it has launched the world's first 4G LTE-Advanced.

The Galaxy S4 with LTE-Advanced will be the first phone to take advantage of the new faster 4G network being launched in South Korea. The phone will be an SK Telecom exclusive, available in both blue and red models.

But this S4 variant will also be just the first of many LTE-Advanced enabled phones available for South Koreans. According to the press release, SK Telecom will have at least seven phones with LTE-Advanced capabilities by the end of the year.

Super streaming

Currently, the LTE-Advanced 4G network is available in Seoul, but the SK Telecom hopes to eventually expand the network in to 84 cities. The telco will price the faster service the same as its current 4G LTE offering.

According to SK Telecom, the new network will offer speeds of up to 150 Mbps, saying that on the LTE-Advanced network, users will be able to download an 800MB movie in just 43 seconds.

Carrier Aggregation and Coordinated Multi Point technology is being used for the network. Next year, SK Telecom plans to add Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination to further improve the network's speeds.

Higher speeds will also allow the South Korean telco 1080p video streaming through its IPTV service, with multi-view broadcasting, HD video-based shopping and FLAC audio file streaming also to be included in the coming months.

Via: Engadget