South Korea's largest mobile operator, SK Telecom's net income decreased sharply by 26.9% to KRW 291 billion in the second quarter of this year due to reduced equity gain from SK Hynix. The Operator total revenue stood at KRW 4.267 trillion, a slight increase of 0.3% year-on-year(YoY) despite the elimination of sign-up fees and increased number of subscribers who choose contract-based plans that grant mobile fee discounts.
As of the end of June 2016, the number of SK Telecom’s LTE subscribers marked 20.03 million, taking up over 68.7% of the company’s total mobile subscriber base. Leveraging a pair of bandwidth blocks (10MHz bandwidth + 20MHz bandwidth) in the 2.6 GHz band that it secured recently, the Operator plans to expand its LTE network using the 30MHz bandwidth, covering Seoul and six metropolitan cities by the end of 2016. It also plans to cover the main areas of 85 cities nationwide by the end of 2017, and all areas within these cities by 2018.
As for Internet-of-Things(IoT), the Operator completed a nationwide LTE-M rollout in March before completing LoRaWAN across the country in June, covering 99 percent of the population and becoming the world’s first operator to secure nationwide coverage for both these IoT technologies.
Hwang Keun-joo, CFO and Head of Strategy and Planning Division at SK Telecom
Based on our efforts in the field of platform business, coupled with our unrivalled leadership in mobile telecommunications, we will continue to increase value for all stakeholders.
