SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM) announced today that its LTE subscribers surpassed 10 million as of April 19, 2012.

SK Telecom exceeded the 10 million subscriber mark in just one year and nine months after launching Korea’s first LTE service in July 2011, whereas it took the company three years and one month to acquire 10 million 3G WCDMA subscribers since commercializing the service in May 2006.

As of April 2013, the company’s LTE subscribers take up 37 percent of its total mobile subscriber base, expanding nearly 16 fold compared to the end of November 2011 when it reported 630,000 LTE subscribers, accounting for a mere 2.4 percent of the total. In addition, the proportion of LTE subscribers among the company’s total mobile subscriber base is currently the highest in the world.

The strong growth of LTE subscribers has been driven by the company’s unmatched network quality, differentiated value-added services, a rich lineup of devices, as well as attractive price plans and programs: 

SK Telecom has completed nationwide LTE deployment covering 99 percent of the nation’s population in July 2012 and is providing seamless LTE coverage in underground and in-building areas as well as mountainous region, and coastal/island/marine areas. The company has continuously developed and applied cutting-edge LTE technologies like Multi Carrier, LTE Femtocell, Downlink CoMP (Coordinated Multi-Point) and SON (Self-Organizing Network) - all of which were commercialized by SK Telecom for the first time in the world - to further enhance its network speed and quality.

Based on its premium-quality network, SK Telecom has developed diverse value-added services specially designed and optimized for the LTE network in order to bring a differentiated experience for its customers. So far the company has launched T Freemium to allow customers to enjoy a wide range of multimedia contents free of charge; T Baseball/T Basketball, a real-time professional baseball/basketball game broadcast service that comes with diverse useful features; and B TV Mobile, a high-quality mobile IPTV service that provides around 40 channels and over 13,000 VOD contents.

Under strong partnerships with device manufacturers, SK Telecom has been offering the richest LTE device lineup. As of April 2013, SK Telecom offers a total of 33 LTE devices including 25 smartphones, 5 tablet PCs, 2 USB modems, and 1 LTE-capable camera.

SK Telecom is offering a wide variety of LTE price plans to meet diverse needs of customers and to encourage them to experience the advantages of the ultra-fast network in the most convenient and cost-effective manner. They include flat-rate plans, specialized plans for different age groups such as the elderly and teenagers, and optional data-only plans. For instance, the company’s most recently launched fixed-rate price plan named ’T&T Sharing’ provides customers with unlimited intra-network voice calls as well as unlimited intra-network and inter-network texting. The company also modified its existing LTE Shareable Data plans to enable lower customers’ cost burden by allowing them to add one data-only device to use the same data pool for free. Moreover, in January 2013, SK Telecom has introduced ’LTE Data Gift Program’ that allows customers to give their remaining data (up to 2GB/ twice a month) to other LTE users through a simple process.

SK Telecom said that it expects to reach 15 million LTE subscribers by the end of 2013. Also, the company plans to commercialize LTE-Advanced in September to provide customer with faster and more reliable services.

"SK Telecom has been able to achieve rapid popularization of LTE through the introduction of ground-breaking LTE technologies and services," said Jang Dong-hyun, Executive Vice President and Head of Marketing Division of SK Telecom. "As LTE is expected to become the mainstream service in 2013, we will focus on developing and offering differentiated LTE services to lead innovations in the ICT industry"