SEOUL -- SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) today held a press conference to announce the completion of the nationwide deployment of Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) based on LoRa technology; the launch of price plans for LoRa-based IoT services; and its plans to vitalize the IoT ecosystem.

The company finished building LoRaWAN across the country by end of June, six months earlier than its initial schedule, covering 99 percent of the population. By securing both nationwide LTE-M and LoRaWAN, which are two main pillars of the IoT network, SK Telecom said that it is now fully ready to create valuable business opportunities in the IoT era. The company had completed nationwide LTE-M rollout in March, 2016.

To promote the growth of the IoT market, SK Telecom plans to offer attractive price plans and develop innovative IoT services, while offering strong support for SMEs. To this end, the company will invest a total of KRW 100 billion by the end of 2017. It expects these efforts to lead to rapid expansion of the IoT industry by connecting over 4 million things to its IoT-dedicated networks by the end of 2017.

SK Telecom unveiled new price plans for LoRaWAN-based IoT services. The “Band IoT” plans come in six different tiers – i.e. from Band IoT 35 (approx. USD 0.3) priced at KRW 350 to Band IoT 200 priced at KRW 2,000(approx. USD 1.75) - depending on data use (refer to table 1) to allow SK Telecom’s customers – both enterprises and individuals - to choose one that suits the needs of their services. The Band Lora plans are highly affordable - costing merely one-tenth of SK Telecom’s LTE-based IoT services - and thus are expected to support active development and provision of diverse IoT services by easing the cost burden of startups and SMEs. The company is also offering diverse discount benefits for enterprise customers depending on their contract period and the number of lines they use.

SK Telecom (Nasdaq: SKM)