LG Uplus, the third-largest mobile operator in South Korea, has completed what it claims is the world’s first “commercial network field trial” of tri-band LTE carrier aggregation (CA), a technology which it dubs 3CC CA.

Using equipment from Huawei, the non-lab trial involved the combination of spectrum from three different frequency bands to offer a peak speed of 300Mb/s: 10MHz each from the 800MHz and 2.1GHz frequency bands, and a 20MHz slice from 2.6GHz.

Compatible smartphones, said the two companies, should be available this year.

LG Uplus and Huawei jointly demonstrated the 3CC CA solution for the first time at MWC 2014. The operator now plans to deploy other advanced technologies, such as Intelligent Carrier Aggregation, to provide better user experiences – although how this will work in practice was not elaborated upon by the two companies.

SK Telekom, South Korea’s biggest mobile operator, also plans to launch tri-band CA LTE-Advanced,  once appropriate chipsets and devices have been developed. The operator has LTE bandwidth in three different frequency bands: 20MHz at 1.8GHz; 10MHz at 800MHz; and 10MHz at 2.1GHz.

Other operators have plans to launch faster LTE networks, capable of theoretical top speeds of 300Mb/s, such as EE in the UK. Russia’s MegaFon has already launched such a network, but there are other ways to achieve the faster speeds than tri-band CA.

Ervins Kampans, CTO at Tele2 Estonia, told Mobile World Live that he was targeting peak download LTE speeds of up to 300Mb/s this year, but would not be following the tri-band CA route favoured by SK Telekom and LG Uplus.

Although Tele2 Estonia has enough spectrum resources across 800MHz, 1.8GHz and 2.6GHz, the CTO said he had not thought seriously about the technology because it’s so nascent.

Tele2 Estonia, using equipment from NSN, is instead debating whether or not to deploy 4×4 MIMO technology or two-band CA – 40MHz combined across 1.8GHz and 2.6GHz – to achieve its 300Mb/s target.

One of Kampans’ main concerns is when mobile devices capable of supporting higher speeds will become available. He’s hopeful they’ll come to market either end 2014 or beginning 2015.