(Telecompaper) Korea's SK Telecom has launched the world's first commercial LTE-Advanced network, along with the first phone running the faster network technology, the Samsung Galaxy S4 LTE-A. The network offers up to 150 Mbps, double the speed of the existing LTE network. Customers will have access free based on their existing data plans, and the service will initially be available in central areas of Seoul and 42 cities in Gyeonggi-do and Chungcheong-do, as well as 103 university areas. SK plans to expand the service with seven supporting smartphones by the end of this year and reach 84 cities covered. LTE-A is expected to support its popular content services, which will include new additions such as group video calling, full HD video streaming, multi-view baseball and shopping and support for Flac music downloads. To further boost content creation, SK Telecom will hold the contest 'LTE-A i.con' for development of applications optimized for the LTE-A network.