Innovative cellcos and their suppliers are increasingly competing to be first to support key elements of LTE-Advanced. While commercial deployments labelled LTE-A are almost always, in fact, confined to the carrier aggregation elements of the extensive standards menu, operators are starting to explore the potential of other items such as CoMP, advanced MIMO and others. Korea’s SK Telecom is often claiming the laurels in these contests, and increasingly, its key partner is Nokia NSN. Their latest joint achievement is the first commercial deployment of Uplink CoMP (Coordinated Multipoint), 18 months after Huawei claimed the first trial of the technology. The Korean carrier plans to apply this enhancement to all its LTE base stations in the course of this year, boosting…