SKT plans LTE test network for ships
South Korea’s SK Telecom plans to build a test LTE network for maritime wireless communications (LTE-M), as part of an R&D project led by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.

LTE-M, which supports high-speed communications on ships located up to 100km from shore, is expected to enhance navigation safety for small ships that have relatively poor inbuilt communications and safety systems compared to large vessels.

SK Telecom plans to deploy the test network by next May in the East Sea of Korea. Radio signals transmitted from a high-gain antenna located at a high altitude in the east coast will be received by LTE-M routers installed on ships.

TOT plans to revive struggling 3G service
Thailand’s state-owned TOT aims to turn around its struggling 3G service this year by investing THB20 million ($573,000) in the business and teaming up with a private company.

3G service revenue accounted for just 5 per cent of TOT’s revenue of THB29 billion last year, the Bangkok Post reported.

TOT is expected to select a strategic partner this month from a shortlist of five firms: True, AIS, Loxley Wireless, Mobile LTE and Samart. A TOT source told the Post it may opt to choose two companies: AIS and one other partner.

TOT operates 3G service on the 2.1GHz band and has 5,320 base stations. The company said it plans to expand its user base from 800,000 to at least three million in two years.

Huawei takes largest share of China Mobile VoLTE project
China Mobile has awarded Huawei a major share of the second phase of its Voice over LTE (VoLTE) rollout across 31 provinces and municipalities.

Huawei reportedly is responsible for building out almost half of the VoLTE project.

China Mobile aims to provide services for 50 million VoLTE subscribers by the beginning of next year. Huawei said a key part of the rollout is the evolution of fixed IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) networks to fixed-mobile convergence networks across 14 provinces.

China Mobile HK demos 3-carrier LTE aggregation
China Mobile Hong Kong demoed LTE-Advanced using three-carrier aggregation to achieve a theoretical peak download speed of 272Mb/s.

The demo aggregated 15MHz of 2.6GHz (FDD) spectrum with two TDD carriers in the 2.3GHz band (one 20MHz and one 10MHz carrier) and used TM500 network testers supplied from Cobham Wireless.