By Yoon Ja-young
Mobile carriers are betting all on the fourth generation (4G) long-term evolution (LTE) service. SK Telecom, the country’s biggest mobile carrier, and LG Uplus ended up launching the service on the same day after competing to be the first to provide it, and LTE seems to be changing the world according to TV commercials.
LTE, which is five times faster than the third-generation (3G) network, indeed means much change. It takes only 2 minutes and 36 seconds to download a 1.4 gigabyte (GB) movie, and 43 seconds to download 100 songs. High-quality video calls and massive multiplayer online role playing games are also available with LTE services, according to the carriers.
LTE is an exciting prospect for those who use a lot of data, but using the ultra-fast data service may end up costing an eye-popping bill a month later.
SK Telecom announced its pay plan for the LTE service around the end of last month. The mobile carrier has been offering unlimited data for 3G users paying 54,000 won or more a month, but it has no unlimited data scheme for the 4G LTE.
For the 52,000 won mobile rate, for instance, SK Telecom’s LTE offers only 1.2 GB of data per month. As this is smaller than a movie, which usually takes around 1.4 GB, it means the month’s data will be consumed if you download a movie. If you download more, it will result in huge additional costs. SK Telecom offers users to choose to pay an additional 9,000 won a month to freely use additional data, but it limited the speed for this option ― as it is even slower than 3G, only Web surfing is possible.
LG Uplus offers more data than SK Telecom ― it offers 1.5 GB for 52,000 won ― but it also scrapped the unlimited data scheme.
When adding around 15,000 won monthly installment payment for the handset, the burden on the users is huge, but they cannot use data services without worrying about the bill.
Mobile carriers explain that they scrapped unlimited data as it is useless for most users. In the case of 3G users that chose unlimited data scheme at SK Telecom, most of them were using less than 1.1 GB per month. The top 1 percent of heavy users took up 23 percent of data downloads, and the top 10 percent, 72 percent. Ordinary users were paying for the heavy users.
Even the mobile service agents, who are supposed to promote the new LTE service, were recommending consumers not to use the service.
“You will just be a test user of the unproven new service, just like Omnia phone users,” said a mobile service agent in Chungmuro, central Seoul, when the reporter asked about the LTE service. The Omnia smartphone, an early smartphone model from Samsung Electronics, caused many complaints among users.
“I believe that 99 percent of agents will recommend consumers not to choose LTE yet,” he said, adding it is still not fully developed.
The LTE service is not complete yet. Currently, it is limited to Seoul. As it uses 3G networks in places without 4G networks, subscribers can’t enjoy the ultra-fast service when out of Seoul; it will take at least a year or two for a nationwide network to be set up.
Another problem is limited handsets. They can’t use LTE with iPhones as only a few handsets are available in the market.
“Qualcomm hasn’t made a single chip yet that integrates diverse networks. As the LTE handsets currently use a dual chip, they aren’t optimized,” an industry source explained. He said the optimized handsets will be available next year.
“LTE is the right answer, and the whole world is heading in that direction, but not right now. I think it would be widely available around the end of the next year when the mobile carriers complete a nationwide network,” he added.
Some consumers are choosing KT’s WiBro 4G instead, which isn’t as speedy as LTE but faster than 3G. For 5,000 won, they can use 30 GB of WiBro 4G service by using KT’s EGG, a mobile router.