SKT to commercialize faster uplink solution

By Lee Min-hyung

SK Telecom said Monday it plans to commercialize a data uplink system that is twice as fast as the existing one in the first half of this year.

The company plans to adopt “Uplink Carrier Aggregation (CA)” technology for its network base stations nationwide.

The move comes amid the rise of the multi-channel network (MCN) industry here. The company said it decided to introduce the new technology to meet the growing needs of online users to post personal images or videos faster and more efficiently.

“Users need to have mobile devices equipped with a chipset to enable the Uplink CA technology,” said an SK Telecom official. “We expect devices with the Uplink CA chipset to be released as early as June.”

The company will start installing the technology at its base stations in Seoul and Gyeoggi Province by the middle of next month. It will then expand coverage nationwide until March.

“Once all the base stations in the nation are fully equipped with the technology, mobile devices will be rolled out,” the official said

Users now can upload online content at 25 mega-bits-per-second (Mbps) on a 10 megahertz (Mhz) frequency bandwidth. But the Uplink CA technology will enable users to upload at 50 Mbps, the official said.

SK Telecom said it could theoretically offer a network environment with a four-times-faster uplink speed by taking advantage of other frequency-related solutions.

The carrier expects the technology to boost industrial expansion in areas such as MCN or user-created content (UCC) or social networking service (SNS) related business sectors.

Lee Jong-bong, chief of the company’s infrastructure division, said: “We will lead the upcoming fifth-generation (5G) network era with the Uplink CA technology.”

He said the company would also display more technologies to improve users’ data networking speed.