SK Telecom and Ericsson have agreed to jointly cooperate in the development of LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) technologies.
The two companies have signed a MoU to jointly develop and demonstrate new LTE-A technologies including small cell-related technologies.
At the Mobile World Congress, SK Telecom and Ericsson will jointly demonstrate LTE-A Super Cell 1.0 technology that promises to nearly eliminate inter-cell boundaries and make multiple number of small cells/macro cells act as one cell by allocating identical cell IDs.
SK Telecom said the Super Cell 1.0 technology removes the need for handover that occurs when the phone is moving away from the area covered by one cell and entering the area covered by another cell, customers can receive seamless service even at the cell boundaries.
The operator said it plans to apply Super Cell 1.0 to its LTE-A network in the second half of this year, and promote advancement of its LTE-A network in a flexible manner in accordance to the international standardization of core LTE-A technologies.
The collaboration comes as the small cell technology is increasingly being highlighted by global mobile carriers as the most cost-effective measure for expanding network capacity and offloading data.
According to Informa Telecoms & Media, the total number of small cells deployed around the world in 2012 stood at 6.5 million, and the figure is expected to reach 15 million by the end of 2013 and 91 million by the year 2016.
Both SK Telecom and Ericsson are displaying Super Cell 1.0 in their booths during the event.
At the show, SK Telecom is also demonstrating a learning robot for children and what it says is the industry’s smallest pico projector for smartphones and tablet PCs.
The educational robot, called Atti, is designed to make learning more fun and interesting for children by utilizing cutting-edge ICT and smartphones. SK Telecom said it is in talks with global companies on partnerships and sales of Atti in overseas markets. Atti is scheduled to be released in the first half of 2013.
The Smart Beam projects video contents stored/being played on smartphones on the ceiling to help lull children to sleep while watching their favorite fairy tales.
SK Telecom said that Smart Beam has been already exported to Germany and is scheduled to export it to countries throughout Europe. Additionally, the company signed a contract to supply Smart Beam to the Malaysian market.