South Korea’s SK Telecom has signed an LTE data roaming deal with Globe Telecom, the second placed operator in the Philippines. The two will begin roaming services on April 1^st. SK also announced that it will launch quad-band LTE devices that function on networks at 850, 1800, 2100 and 2600MHz in the second quarter of this year, although it did not reveal which vendor would supply the devices.

SK has had an LTE roaming deal in place with CSL in Hong Kong since June last year and with Singaporean incumbent SingTel since March 1^st this year. The Korean operator said that it was “strongly positioning itself as the centre of cooperation in the Asia Pacific Region.”

Kim Young-Sup, Senior Vice President and Head of Collaboration Marketing Office at SK Telecom said, “As the first company in the world to commercialize LTE roaming, SK Telecom is committed to enhancing customer experience through seamless global LTE auto roaming. Going forward, SK Telecom will expand its strategic partnerships with mobile carriers across the globe, while also focusing on enriching the line-up of devices that function in multiple frequency bands.”

With LTE deployments ramping up fast worldwide, enabling international roaming is once again a key industry priority. US LTE pioneer Verizon Wireless told Telecoms.com that it was sounding out LTE roaming partners at Mobile World Congress earlier this year.

The LTE Asia conference is taking place on the 18^th-19^th September 2013 at the Suntec, Singapore. Click here to download a brochure for the event.