SK Telecom Wednesday announced that it will begin commercial services of its LTE Cat-M1 in April delivering high volume data generated from IoT devices on the latest nationwide LTE network for IoT applications.

LTE Cat-M1 is one of the standards published by 3GPP, an international collaboration to develop global mobile communications specifications.

The newest version of SK Telecom’s LTE-M technology is expected to help a broad use of IoT applications which require the transmission of mid- and high-volume data, such as voice and photo.

SK Telecom currently delivers lower-power, lower-volume data transmission on LoRa networks.

LTE Cat-M1 is expected to lower manufacturing costs of IoT devices as its communications modules are 30 percent cheaper than their counterparts for LTE-M, bringing more companies into an ecosystem for IoT business, according to the company. The affordability of the technology will also reduce the burden on IoT device owners, contributing to the expansion of the market for IoT applications.

SK Telecom also unveiled a blackbox modem and a blood glucose meter available on the LTE Cat-M1 network. Such devices will allow real-time data monitoring and management on the network.

By Kim Gyu-sik and Minu Kim

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