South Korea’s largest cellco by subscribers, SK Telecom (SKT), has reportedly agreed to share its knowledge related to Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology with China Telecom Corporation, according to Yonhap News Agency. It is understood that SKT will help the Chinese company set up its 4G infrastructure in Shanghai by sharing both its technology and experience. With SKT planning to send its telecoms experts to China as part of the deal, the South Korean operator has confirmed it plans to expand its LTE consulting services to other cities in the world’s second-largest economy.

As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, in December last year China’s industry ministry officially handed over 4G mobile licences to China Telecom, as well as to fellow wireless operators China Mobile and China Unicom, allowing at least one of them to progress with the launch of commercial 4G services. The concessions are for domestically-developed Time Division LTE (TD)-LTE technology which is favoured by China Mobile. Unicom has announced that it will be using the rival frequency division duplexing (FDD) variant of LTE, while Telecom plans to use mainly FDD-LTE with some regions covered by TD-LTE.

SK Telecom inked a similar deal to share its LTE knowledge in Indonesia earlier this month, while it is expected to forge links with unnamed mobile carriers in Taiwan and Mongolia during the first half of 2014. Commenting on the developments, SKT was cited as saying: ‘The China and Indonesia deals proved SK Telecom’s global competitiveness in the LTE service.’