South Korea’s largest mobile operator SK Telecom (SKT) announced it reached the one million 5G subscriber milestone on 21 August, less than five months after launching the next-generation service simultaneously with its rivals in early April.

In a statement, the operator, with a 48 per cent share of mobile subscribers in the country, said 5G customers account for 3.6 per cent of its total sub base of 27.6 million, with the average monthly data usage increasing to 33.7GB compared with 20.4GB for LTE users.

As a reference point, the company said after commercialising LTE service in July 2011, it took eight months to hit the 1-million LTE sub mark

SKT customers have a choice of three 5G handsets – the Galaxy S10, V50 ThinQ, Galaxy Note 10 – with additional models expected to be released soon.

In their Q2 earnings statements, SKT reported 530,000 5G users at end-June, KT had 420,000 and LG Uplus claimed 387,000.

The operators reached 1 million 5G subscribers combined in mid-June.