SK Telecom to start operating nationwide IoT wireless network in April

By Park Sae-jin Posted : February 21, 2018, 17:19 Updated : February 21, 2018, 17:19

[Courtesy of SK Telecom]



SEOUL, Feb. 21 (Aju News) -- As part of its big plan to cover South Korea with mobile networks dedicated to internet on things (IoT) devices, SK Telecom will start operating a new fourth-generation (4G) network which has lower data speed but costs less.

SK Telecom, the country's top mobile carrier, said Wednesday that it would start "LTE CatM1", a new IoT network service, in April. The company is already covering most of South Korea with "LoRa", a long range, low power wireless platform network, set up in 2016.

The company promised to operate its IoT network separately in a two-track project. "We plan to provide every service required by the future IoT environment to lead the super-connected era," an SK Telecom official told Aju News.

IoT devices are the hottest subject in the global IT industry. Tech companies competitively release devices including home appliances, AI voice assistant speakers, trackers and wearables to gain its share in the market. Some connected cars, currently the most spotlighted future technology, rely on low-speed mobile networks to send and receive on-road conditions and information.

SK Telecom's LoRa is slower in data transferring speed than the fourth-generation Long Term Evolution (4G LTE) network, but it is more suited for IoT use, more efficient and cheaper in sending and receiving small-sized data packets.

While maintaining LoRa for low-speed IoT services, SK Telecom will use LTE Cat.M1 for other IoT services which require fast speed like images, video, medium and large-sized data packets.

LTE Cat.M1 is a global standard set by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a union of telecom standard development organizations. Its data transferring speed is about 300kb per second, similar to that of the third-generation (3G) network.

According to SK Telecom, the price of LTE Cat.M1 communication modules are about 30 percent cheaper than 4G devices. Consumers and hardware makers will benefit from cheap prices and the new IoT network will work anywhere, underground and inside a building.

Along with its new network, SK Telecom plans to introduce two IoT devices -- a dashboard camera and a blood sugar monitoring device at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) to be held in Barcelona on February 26.

Using LTE Cat.M1, the dashboard camera provides connected services such as alerting its owner when it senses suspicious actions when parked or when the car's battery level is low. The blood sugar monitor records blood sugar levels regularly to help control the illness of users.

LTE Cat.M1 will go through a test phase in March to have its services stabilized and optimized for commercialization before going fully online in April.
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