In a regular series, Mobile World Live‘s Asia Editor Joseph Waring provides a regional roundup of news snippets:

SKT, Samsung cooperate on 5G R&D
SK Telecom and Samsung Electronics signed an agreement today to start joint research on 5G network technology and service development.

The companies agreed to share the 5G vision with standardisation groups and technology forums in and out of the country, define and select frequency bands suitable for 5G technology, conduct R&D and experiment on enabling technologies including the next generation small cell, massive MIMO and next-generation modulation/ demodulation, and develop large-volume and high-quality services of 5G and IoT.

A press release from SK Telecom noted that 5G technology has not offficially been standardised yet. However, the company said that, in an effort to ensure a differentiated customer experience over 5G networks, SK Telecom is looking at developing “immersive services available anytime and anywhere based on giga-bit level data rates.” The services include augmented reality and virtual reality, tele-presence and realistic services such as holograms.

India delays 8% fee on ISPs
India’s Telecom Commission has once gain deferred a proposal to impose an 8 per cent fee on ISPs’ revenue since it could lead to higher tariffs and slow the government’s Digital India project.

The Economic Times reported that Department of Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg, who also chairs the Telecom Commission, said the proposal needs to be discussed further.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India suggested last year a fee of 8 per cent of ISPs’ adjusted gross revenue since that is what telecoms firms are charged.

The Internet Service Providers Association of India had said such a fee would impact its ability to hit the government’s target of 175 million broadband connections by 2017 and 600 million by 2020.

Globe expands flat-rate data roaming to 75 nations
Globe Telecom has expanded the network of countries covered by its flat data roaming rates to an additional 40 countries. Globe now offers a daily rate of PHP599 (about $13) in 75 countries. New destinations include Japan, France, Brazil, Greece and the Netherlands.

The company now also bundles the roaming offer with free TravelCare insurance. Its postpaid customers automatically receive up to PHP200,000 ($4,465) worth of travel protection for delayed or cancelled flights, lost or damaged luggage, as well as accidental death or medical emergencies.

PLDT doubles TD-LTE network
PLDT said it has rolled out 1,800 4G base stations across the Philippines. It said it doubled the number of TD-LTE base stations to 400 in remote areas such as Cebu, Bohol, Boracay, southern Luzon and Mindanao, while it now has 1,400 FDD-LTE sites.

The country’s leading operator uses TD-LTE to offer customers home broadband service (Home Bro Ultera) at up to10 Mb/s.

LTE-A tri-band CA demo
Ericsson and SK Telecom said they have achieved peak downlink speeds of 300Mb/s during a demo of LTE-Advanced tri-band carrier aggregation (CA) on a commercial network. The demonstration combined three separate bands of 10MHz, 10MHz and 20MHz spectrum.