SK Telecom said it has successfully developed 3 Band LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation technology and plans to show off network speeds of up to 450 Mbps at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC).
The Korean wireless provider said Monday that it can combine three bands—two 10 MHz bands and one 20 MHz—and hit aggregated downlink rates of 300 Mbps. The company expects to commercially launch the service by the end of 2014 when it estimates compatible chipsets will come to market.
But before that version of SK Telecom’s 3 Band carrier aggregation sees an official deployment, the carrier will test out an even faster version for attendees at MWC next month in Barcelona. SK Telecom plans to display three 20 MHz component carriers aggregated and show off speeds up to 450 Mbps.
With its fairly early developments in regards to carrier aggregation and LTE-Advanced, SK Telecom said it expects to play a role in global standardization for 3 Band carrier aggregation.
SK Telecom last summer announced its plans for carrier aggregation and a compatible Samsung Galaxy S4 to run on the new network technology. The carrier said it plans to deploy another LTE-Advanced technology, Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination, by 2014.