SK Telecom to launch Wi-Fi 6 router in first quarter

SK Telecom’s subsidiary SK Broadband will launch Wi-Fi 6 routers for homes in the first quarter, TheElec has learned.

The telco is the last to launch among its competitors in South Korea. KT and LG Uplus have already launched theirs last year.

SK Broadband is planning to procure routers from Mercury for the rollout. Mecury will provide the initial stock, faster than HFR, which has been SK’s main router supplier for Wi-Fi 5.

KT was the first to launch a Wi-Fi 6 router in August 2020. Mercury is the sole supplier. Allradio and Davolink are also developing routers with KT and is waiting to supply theirs.

LG Uplus launched its own Wi-Fi 6 routers in October last year. Davolink is the supplier. The supply to LG Uplus is based on Qualcomm’s chips and those for KT are made using MediaTek’s. Both routers have maximum speeds of 1.2Gbps.

SK Broadband’s current Wi-Fi 5 routers have a maximum speed of 867Mbps, slower than KT and LG Uplus’ Wi-Fi 6 routers. 

Wi-Fi 6 uses orthogonal frequency division multiple access technology, which can support connections with multiple devices without data interruptions. This differs from Wi-Fi 5’s orthogonal frequency multiplexing, which switches data transfer between devices when there are more than one.

In December, KT announced that it has developed Wi-Fi 6E, which adds 6GHz spectrum support to existing 2.4GHz and 5GHz.