World's First LTE Advanced Service Launched with Samsung Galaxy S5

SK Telecom has recently launched the world’s first LTE Advanced commercial service in Seoul, South Korea, and other cities. This service offers data rates up to 225 Mbps using the carrier aggregation feature. This is a significant improvement, being three times faster than existing LTE networks and roughly fifteen times faster than 3G networks.

SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest mobile operator, has announced that this service will be available to customers without any extra charge.

Understanding LTE Advanced

LTE Advanced adheres to the specifications outlined in 3GPP Release 10 and supports carrier aggregation, a feature absent in earlier LTE products. Carrier aggregation allows the user equipment (UE) to utilize two symmetric or asymmetric bandwidths of the LTE network, leading to higher speeds. The current LTE Advanced system combines a 20MHz bandwidth from the 1.8GHz frequency band and a 10MHz bandwidth from the 800MHz frequency band. SK Telecom plans to combine two 20MHz bands starting in July to further increase speeds.

Mr. Lee Jong-bong, Head of SK Telecom, stated that this LTE service “will pave the way for Korea to open up an era of 5G in the future.”

The other two mobile service operators in South Korea are KT and LG Uplus. LG Uplus also supports LTE Advanced with carrier aggregation across three frequency bands.

Note: LTE frequency bands used in LTE networks are based on two different topologies: TDD and FDD.

Samsung Galaxy S5 LTE-A

To support the availability of LTE Advanced networks and their higher speeds, SK Telecom is introducing the Samsung Galaxy S5 LTE phone. Samsung has recently launched an LTE phone version of the Galaxy S5 series with LTE-A capabilities, featuring a display size of approximately 2560 X 1440. As mentioned before, this phone supports carrier aggregation, enabling speeds of up to 225 Mbps on LTE Advanced networks.

Key Features of the Samsung Galaxy S5 LTE-A

• QHD Super AMOLED display
• 2.5 GHz frequency band
• Quad-core Snapdragon processor model 805 from Qualcomm
• 3GB RAM
• Rear camera: 16 Megapixel, Front camera: 2 Megapixel
• Runs on “Kit Kat” Android 4.4
• Battery capacity of 2800 mAh
• Supports LTE-A networks
• Available in White, Black, Copper Gold, Pink, Red, and Blue

This Samsung LTE phone includes features like Geo News, reminders, heart rate measurement, a fingerprint scanner, and a deep sleep mode. It’s also waterproof and dustproof.