Only in Korea – Korea Telecom is suing rival SK Telecom over the claims for its triband carrier aggregated LTE-A network. As most operators struggle to plan for two-carrier aggregation – and certainly never mention that to the consumers – SKT is making capital from its world-first upgrade.
This has angered KT, which says the speeds advertised are not possible because there are no handsets, yet, supporting the triband network. It is asking the court for an injunction against SKT advertising its new offering, arguing that, by claiming this is a commercial service, when handsets are not available, is deceiving consumers and distorting competition.
Meanwhile, KT is taking a different approach to enhancing its 4G service in future, becoming the first operator to complete tests of a new 4T4R antenna technology which can extend the range of a single LTE base station to up to 120 kilometers.
The 4-transmit 4-receiver technology is a step on from the 3T3R which underpins some of Sprint’s roll-out in the US, and the technology was supplied by Nokia. By doubling the number of antennas in a conventional network, the four-way option can deliver 100Mbps peak downlink rates over long ranges, raising hopes for broadband services to remote or sparsely populated areas, at an affordable cost to the operator.
However, 4T4R is probably several years away from the mainstream and is likely to form the basis of commercial products which may even wait for the ‘5G’ era to be deployed in volume.
Also on the antenna front, Huawei has announced a dual-beam radio antenna that it says can improve capacity and efficiency in six-sector networks. These configurations are often used to maximize spectrum use when resources are limited.
But the Chinese vendor claims this approach provides only “negligible” capacity gain and entails high costs as well as ‘side lobe’ interference, caused by radiation escaping from the antennas in unwanted directions.
The new design addresses those concerns by supporting two beams at the same width as current models, so that six-sector sites only require three antennas, saving tower space and reducing the side lobe interference problem. The first deployer is AIS in Thailand which says it has improved coverage and capacity by 70%.