LG Uplus announced Thursday that it would launch a mobile network service that is twice as fast as the current long term evolution service.

The mobile carrier expects the “broadband LTE” to bring new momentum for growth.

“Along with its existing LTE and LTE-A networks, the new service will help LG Uplus lead the market by providing the most stable and fastest LTE services,” said Lee Chang-woo, executive vice president of the mobile firm. 

LTE subscribers of LG in Seoul and surrounding areas will be able to use the faster service with speeds of up to 150 Mbps from this year, and those in the rest of the nation from next year.

LTE-A is a technology that uses two separate spectrum bandwidths of 10MHz, utilizing the so-called carrier aggregation technology whereas the broadband LTE combines two 10MHz bandwidths into one bandwidth.

LG Group’s affiliate, which is the third largest after SK Telecom and KT by number of subscribers, also announced further plans to provide better and faster services than broadband LTE.

By connecting frequency ranges in bandwidths of 800MHz, 2.1GHz, and 2.6GHz, LG will from March start the so-called three-band multi-carrier service, which can disperse mobile data traffic through three mobile traffic lanes, the firm said in a press release.

With a combined network of LTE and broadband LTE, which is scheduled to be established by next July, LG subscribers will be able to avail of transfer speeds of up to 225 Mbps.

Furthermore, the three band carrier aggregation which joins three bandwidths together will offer data speed of up to 300 Mbps from March in 2015.

LG’s announcement follows those of its domestic competitors SK Telecom and KT, which also said earlier this month that they would start broadband LTE services.

Upon the end of the 10-day bidding for new frequency ranges last month, the three started picking up the pace to introduce faster mobile network services and attract more customers.

KT won the 15MHz frequency range in the 1.8GHz spectrum in the bid while SKT and LG Uplus won a frequency range in bandwidths of 1.8GHz and 2.6GHz, respectively.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)