SK Telecom on March 31 announced that it has completed construction of 26,000 2.1GHz base stations across the nation for 3-band LTE-A service provision.

Now SK Telecom users can enjoy 3-band LTE-A service in 85 major cities of Korea, including Seoul and 6 metropolitan cities.

The company plans to build additional 5,000 base stations by August to make sure it has the nation's largest 3-band LTE-A coverage, providing a wider service area for users.  

SK Telecom has also upgraded its repeaters deployed across the nation to ones capable of supporting 3-band LTE-A, to offer the 4-times faster 3-band LTE-A service nationwide, even in areas with poor reception like inside buildings or underground.

The company noted that, in building the 3-band LTE-A base stations, it used ‘T-PANI’ and ‘APOLLO’, which were presented as big data-based intelligent operation platforms at Mobile World Congress 2015 held at Barcelona, Spain in early March.

Using the two solutions, the company:
(1) determined the best locations to build 2.1G base stations, and
(2) will be providing the best network service not only to users subscribing to 3-band LTE-A service, but also those subscribing to conventional LTE services like wideband LTE-A service, by analyzing and automatically optimizing the network conditions in real time.