• KT, from 14th September, will launch the commercial service for ‘Wideband LTE-A’, covering entire areas in 4 major provinces of Seoul and major areas in Korean 6 metropolitan cities.
• KT plans to expand LTE-A service coverage to the entire areas of Seoul and metropolitan areas by the end of September.
• Current KT LTE phone users can now enjoy the data speed of up to 100Mbps, and LTE-A phone users will be able to enjoy the data speed of up to 150Mbps, two times faster than the current service.
• More variety of contents and media services compatible with Wideband LTE-A, such as music and movie contents, will be provided.

KT (Chairman and CEO Dr. Lee, Suk Chae, www.kt.com) announced their first commercial launch of LTE-A service over ‘golden frequency band’ and CA(Carrier Aggregation) technology on PM 21:00, the 14thof September.

KT will provide LTE-A commercial service into 4 provinces in Seoul (Kang Nam-gu, Seo Cho-gu, Chung-gu, Chongno-gu) and major areas in 6 metropolitan cities (Pusan, Incheon, Daechoen, Daegu, Kwangju, Ulsan) and extend the service into the entire areas of Seoul and major capital areas.

In accordance to the conditions in frequency band allocated by Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, the areas, to which Wideband service will be provided late will be serviced with ‘Wideband LTE-A with CA technology. As of now, KT is the only service provider in the world that provides both Wideband LTE(20MHz downlink) service and LTE-A service based on CA technology.

Especially, KT can utilize its existent1.8GHz nation-wide 100,000 digital cell sites.  Therefore, KT is able to provide seamless Wideband LTE service and expand the service coverage at a much faster speed than its competitors.  KT can provide superior LTE service than its competitors that can only provide LTE-A service.

KT will extend the service into all areas in the metropolitan cities until March 2014 and all around the nation by July 2014.

Accordingly the existing customers with LTE phone can use 100Mbps maximum speed without changing phones and the customers with LTE-A phones can use 150Mbps maximum.

More variety of contents and media services compatible with Wideband LTE-A, such as music and movie contents, will be provided. KT will provide various benefits to its customers such as enriched contents and phone renewing service on the timing of LTE-A commercial service launch.

For further inquiry: Global collaboration team, Yoon Jeong Kim ([email protected])