SK Telecom on Thursday has said that it is committed to opening an era of “LTE 2.0,” marked by sophistication and popularization of LTE services and network.

The company plans to lead communication service innovation in an all IP environment where voice and data are integrated. It will be introducing Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and Rich Communication Suite (RCS) to provide customers with high quality call and messaging services.

Declaring this in a press conference presided over by Joon Dong Bae, President of Network Operations Business of SK Telecom, the company said the new era will be defined by innovative LTE services, 4High quality communication services, 4 lifestyle enhancing LTE services and 4industrial productivity improving solutions.

SK Telecom became the world’s second largest LTE service provider in just a year since launching commercial LTE service for the 22nd time in the world in July 2011.

The company said it will lead LTE network evolution by covering 99% of the population with its LTE network by June; become the world’s first to commercialize Multi Carrier (MC) on July 1, and realize up to 150Mbps data rate through LTE-A commercialization in the second half of 2013.

SK Telecom said it will continue to bring innovative LTE services for customers to experience a more pleasant and convenient mobile life at both work and daily life.

SK Telecom unveiled plans to commercialize its VoLTE service named ‘HD Voice’ in the third quarter of this year. HD Voice is a premium communication service that offers voice, video and data in an integrated manner.

Compared to the existing 3G voice call, it offers up to 2.2 times better sound quality and twice faster call connection speed (requires less than 0.3-2.5 seconds of call connecting time).

HD Voice enables users to switch from a voice call to video any time during a call, and share content like photos and video with the person on the other end of the phone. The strength of HD Voices lies in that it can be further upgraded with the addition of new value and diverse features.

Although HD Voice is a premium version that offers differentiated value, the company plans to apply its current pay per second billing system to minimize customers’ cost burden and promote service use. Details of service rates will be set once the company completes designing the optimal offer for customers.

SK Telecom is also stepping up efforts to commercialize RCS service, chosen as the direction of evolution of mobile communications, along with VoLTE, by worldwide mobile carriers.

It will first integrate its messaging services such as SMS into an RCS service and provide differentiated service quality leveraging reliability and stability, the core strengths of mobile carriers, and plans to develop RCS into a next generation integrated communication platform by expanding RCS capable devices, securing fixed mobile interworking, and converging RCS with HD Voice and other new services. The company plans to launch its RCS service in the second half of this year after building a detailed service structure and billing systems.