South Korea’s SK Telecom announced it will launch LTE roaming services throughout Japan, starting on 13 September, in cooperation with SoftBank.

LTE roaming between the two countries will be possible using LTE/LTE-Advanced devices supporting 1.8GHz or 2.1GHz frequencies.

In Saudi Arabia, South Korea’s largest operator said it has successfully trialed interworking of 1.8GHz FDD-LTE and 2.6GHz TD-LTE networks with Mobily. Commercial roaming services are expected soon.

Mobily is Saudi Arabia’s second-largest mobile operator behind STC.

“By achieving successful interworking between FDD-LTE and TD-LTE trial networks in Saudi Arabia, we are confident that we will be able to bring LTE roaming service to another level,” said Kim Young-sup, senior vice president at SK Telecom.

In its home market, SK Telecom has been ramping up rollout of LTE and LTE-A networks. Recent reports suggest the operator had achieved 350,000 subscribers to its LTE-Advanced network by August 7 and is adding around 50,000 a week.

Using LTE-A based on carrier aggregation, SK Telecom plans to combine newly-acquired bandwidth at 1800MHz (20MHz) and 800 MHz (10MHz) to offer downlink speeds of up to 225Mb/s by next year.