Gangnam in southern Seoul is one of the busiest districts in the city, and that means slower traffic ― including on mobile phones.

Given the Korean trait of always being in a hurry and wanting information quickly, this can be a source of frustration.

SK Telecom, the country’s largest telecommunications company, is offering a test-version of multicarrier network services in the district to relieve this problem, which is expected to increase as 4G long term evolution grows.

Backed by SK Telecom’s two frequencie, 800MHz and 1.8 GHz, the service allows users of LTE smart devices to experience reduced online traffic congestion through load balancing and inter-frequency handover technologies.

They enable users to maintain faster connections by automatically re-routing to a different frequency when the other one is expected to get jammed.

This is the first time in the world for a telecom company to provide such a service, the company noted. It will commercially launch this service in July.

“We will first expand this service in Seoul and Busan, and in subways where mobile traffic is increasing, then move on to other major cities and provinces in the country,” Lee Jong-bong, vice president of SK Telecom’s network division, told a press conference Wednesday.

Pantech’s smartphone Vega Racer 2, released last May, has been embedded with SK’s multicarrier functions, and SK Telecom is in talks with other manufacturers to release multicarrier-equipped LTE smartphones in the latter half of this year.

The Korean telecom company added that it will secure additional frequencies in the near future in order to provide faster connectivity in the country where 4G use is rapidly increasing.

By Park Hyong-ki (hkp@heraldcorp.com)