KT rises as total solution provider

Models demonstrates KT’s unified roaming service during the Mobile World Congress in the Spanish city of Barcelona, Wednesday. / Courtesy of KT

By Kim Yoo-chul

Korea’s telecommunications giant KT is transforming itself into a total solution provider by proving it can handle global roaming management while offering converged application services.

On Wednesday, the Bundang, Gyeonggi Province-based outfit said in a statement that it has begun offering unified Long Term-Evolution (LTE) network roaming services regardless of network variations by partnering with China Mobile Hong Kong (CMHK).

Under the collaboration, Koreans who travel to Hong Kong will be able to use LTE roaming service without changing devices, spokeswoman Juliana Kim was quoted as saying in the statement.

The move comes after China Mobile recently completed a trial service in cooperation with KT.

Those trials were based on China Mobile’s IPX network and were to set up global roaming configurations angling towards a unified TD (Time Division)-LTE and LTE-FDD (Frequency Division Duplexing) model.

TD-LTE uses a single swath of spectrum to transmit both uplink and downlink signals, while LTE-FDD uses separate channels to transmit signals.

The TD-LTE technology is being used in China and India, while the LTE-FDD network technology is currently being serviced in major countries including South Korea.

``As China, which has the world’s largest mobile subscribers, is ready to start its LTE service via TD-LTE technology, KT is seen to offer our experienced LTE service to Chinese customers than other rivals. KT will try hard to strengthen bilateral partnership with China Mobile,’’ the spokeswoman Kim said.

Since February 2011, the Korean telecommunication company has been expanding its LTE roaming coverage with NTT DoCoMo of Japan and China Mobile as KT is using 1.8-gigahertz (GHz) as its primary LTE network. About 40 global carriers are offering their LTE services within that radio frequency.

Meanwhile, the company was awarded a special prize by the joyn Innovation Challenge at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) telecommunications exhibition because its in-house network services impressed major partners. The challenge is an initiative to encourage innovation based on joyn.

The challenge will stimulate mobile and web application developers and technology innovators to build on the core capabilities of joyn and explore ideas for new and attractive services.

The service was initially launched in December last year in Korea after Germany and Spain. The main aim of the service was to compete with existing free messaging application service providers such as KaKao Talk.

``KT is the only telecommunications company among all the others in the world that was awarded the prize, meaning we are seeing evolution in our businesses,’’ said the spokeswoman Kim.