5G users take up more than 10% of mobile phone users in South Korea

More than 10 percent of South Koreans are estimated to be connected by 5G as of the end of May, a year since the country became the first in the world to migrate from LTE wireless network or 4G.

According to the Ministry of Science and ITC on Monday, the number of 5G service subscribers of SK Telecom Co. gained 7.7 percent from the previous month to 2,850,923 as of the end of April.

If the mobile carrier had added a similar number of new 5G users in May, the total number would have reached 3.07 million, exceeding 3 million for the first time. Some even estimated the number would have surpassed 3.1 million as of the end of May.

An official from SK Telecom said the company is waiting for the ICT ministry’s official data, but it is tentatively assuming the figure would have exceeded at least 3 million.

Another wireless carrier KT Corp. was also expected to have recorded more than 2 million 5G subscribers. The company added 144,264 new 5G subscribers to 1,922,701 in April, up 8.1 percent from March. If applied the same growth rate, the figure would have amounted to 2.08 million as of the end of May.

LG Uplus Corp. was also estimated to have recorded more than 1.7 million in the number of 5G users in late May.

All told, the number of 5G service subscribers as of the end of May would have reached 6.9 million to 7 million, accounting for around 10 percent of the total wireless service users.

The number of 5G users stood at 6,339,917 as of the end of April, about 9.1 percent of the entire 69,348,210 subscribers.

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