Deployment of WiBro in South Korea is ramping up according to local reports, with mobile operator SK Telecom and the country’s largest fixed line operator KT working on deployment of ‘Wave 2’ of the technology. WiBro is a high-speed mobile broadband technology only currently available in South Korea and based on the IEEE’s mobile WiMAX 802.16 standard. The Korea Times states that KT’s rollout of Wave 2 WiBro – incorporating Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology – will begin in 19 cities in the Gyeonggi Province, the largest and most populated province in South Korea with 11 million residents, from October. KT aims to eventually cover the whole country with WiBro, and claims to have had 160,000 subscribers at the end of April, with a target of 400,000 by December.

Meanwhile, SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest mobile operator, is to launch Wave 2 WiBro in the capital city of Seoul later this year, according to Telecoms Korea. The report claims that Wave 2 WiBro can, in theory, provide peak speeds of 37.44 Mb/s in the downlink and 10.08 Mb/s in the uplink. The report adds that although SK Telecom is providing WiBro services in 56 ‘hotzones’ in 23 cities across the country, only up to 1,000 people are currently subscribed to the technology.