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SK Telecom announced plans on Apr. 20 to introduce LTE five-band carrier aggregation (CA) fourth-generation telecommunications technology for the Galaxy S8 smartphone starting in mid-May. (provided by SK Telecom)

SK Telecom announced plans on Apr. 20 to introduce LTE five-band carrier aggregation (CA) fourth-generation telecommunications technology for the Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone starting in mid-May.

The technology increases data transmission speed and performance by binding five LTE frequencies into a single frequency.

“The data transmission rate for five-band CA is 700Mbps, which means it would take just 23 seconds to download a single [2GB] HD film,” SK Telecom said.

“That’s nine times faster than early LTE and 40% faster than the current LTE ultra-high speed (500Mbps),” it explained.

SK Telecom plans to launch the service in 23 cities in South Korea in mid-May, including Seoul and metropolitan cities, before expanding it to 85 regions in the first half of the year, with continued efforts afterwards to broaden availability. The service is also to be included as a basic feature with most smartphones put on the market after the Samsung Galaxy S8.

SK Telecom declared that the five-band CA technology, which it said “has been called the last stage of evolution in LTE services,” would “usher in a 4.5G era of telecommunications where the boundary between wired and wireless disappears.”

It also noted “predictions that as 4.5G services evolves, it will become possible to provide telecommunications services at speeds of over 1Gbps, which is faster than the cable-based GiGA Internet.”

In addition, SK Telecom announced that it had begun applying C-DRX technology, which reduces smartphone battery use by up to 45%, in all regions of South Korea as of Apr. 20. The service applies to most LTE phones released by SK Telecom since Oct. 2011 without requiring separate setup steps. KT previously announced the technology’s application to its national network as of Apr. 1.

By Ahn Seon-hee, staff reporter