South Korea’s number-one operator SK Telecom claims to have become the first in the world to launch commercial multi-carrier LTE services.

Launched yesterday (1 July), the new network  will utilise both SK’s existing 800MHz frequency band (20MHz) and the 1.8GHz (20MHz) spectrum it acquired last year, giving it a total of 40MHz bandwidth for LTE – more than any other rival operator, it claims.

It plans to include multi-carrier LTE support in “most” of the smartphones it expects to launch in the second half of the year, including the Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE.

SK says the multi-carrier technology enables the “effective and efficient use of frequencies,” meaning that “mobile data traffic is optimally distributed to each frequency band, preventing network overload.” This enables LTE users to experience “the fastest speed even at times of unexpected surges of mobile data traffic,” it says.

SK launched a multi-carrier LTE pilot in May 2012 and began “full-fledged commercialisation” on 1 July.

Starting with Seoul’s Gangnam area, the operator plans to complete roll-out of the new network in Seoul and major areas in six metropolitan cities by year-end.

“SK Telecom will provide the fastest and the most reliable LTE service through the world's first adoption of the innovative MC technology that allows for the use of twice wider frequency bandwidth than its competitors in Korea," said SK EVP Kwon Hyuk-Sang.

Last month, SK announced it had achieved 99 percent population coverage for its LTE network (first launched last July), and claimed to be the world’s second-largest LTE operator after Verizon Wireless in the US.

The company currently has around 3.4 million LTE subscribers and says it is on track to hit 7 million by year-end.