South Korea’s largest mobile operator SK Telecom expanded coverage of its recently launched LTE-Advanced Pro (LTE-A Pro) network to 75 cities and 31 counties in the country.

The operator, with a 49 per cent share of the country’s mobile subscribers, in June launched LTE-A Pro service using five-band carrier aggregation (CA) to deliver peak downlink rates of 700Mb/s in 53 cities. At the time, SKT said the service was the world’s using first five-band CA.

Since the launch, SKT rolled out the service in the main areas of Seoul, Chungcheong, Yeongnam, Jeolla and Gangwon.

SKT said it also expanded coverage of LTE-A Pro using three-band and four-band CA, to deliver peak download speeds of up to 900Mb/s to all major commercial districts throughout the country.

The company said in June it expects to combine the five-band CA service and the 900Mb/s LTE-A Pro service, with both using 4×4 multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technology, to reach 50 per cent of the population by year-end.

Only the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Note8 are compatible with SKT’s LTE-A Pro service. While the operator expects new premium smartphones compatible with the technology to be launched soon, it did not give a timeframe.

SKT’s mobile subscriber base stands at nearly 30 million, with 76 per cent on 4G plans, according to GSMA Intelligence.