By Yoon Ja-young
Complaint that their wireless Internet didn’t work when in crowded places used to echo among smartphone users. Such dissatisfaction has ebbed of late, significantly according to KT and it revealed why.
The country’s biggest communications company announced at a meeting with the media Thursday that its cloud communications center (CCC) system, installed in downtown Seoul earlier this year, greatly improved its network. Consequently the speed of wireless data transmission doubled.
Unlike other base station systems, CCC separates the digital unit that deals with digital signals and the radio unit that handles wireless signals. The digital units are concentrated at KT toll centers around the country, while the radio unit is installed in the service area.
By separating the units, KT can decrease the load on the base station by around 50 percent. As a result, it can prevent deteriorating call quality or stalling Internet transmission speed. The ratio of dropped calls decreased by around 70 percent and there were over 60 percent fewer consumer complaints about the quality of voice calls.
Spurred by a suggestion from KT, in 2009 Ericsson accepted the challenge to develop CCC technology to ultimately improve networks. KT is the first to introduce CCC.
KT said it could commercialize the CCC technology thanks to its 3,700 toll centers around the country, and a wired optical fiber network, essential for CCC. KT started as the country’s first wired telephone service company and has a wide network, which its local competitors lack.
The mobile carrier’s CCC system currently covers around 90 percent of Seoul, and it plans to expand this to the remaining ten percent on top of 21 other cities by the end of this year.
Also on the agenda is introducing CCC to 4G long-term evolution (LTE) as well. “Our LTE service will be provided on a CCC system. Though we are late in setting up the LTE network, we will be providing an alternative and more complete service thanks to CCC,” a representative for KT said.
SK Telecom and LG Uplus, the other two local mobile carriers, have been betting on the ultra-fast LTE service. KT was lagging in the LTE competition as it must gain approval from the telecommunications regulator to halt its unprofitable 2G service before providing an LTE service. Converting the 2G network into LTE is on the list of things to do.