LIVE FROM 5G ASIA, SINGAPORE: SK Telecom (SKT) expressed optimism a small increase in ARPU in Q2 is an early signal of a turnaround in its long-suffering mobile revenue.

Takki Yu, head of the access network development team (pictured), said the big news is ARPU stopped falling in the second quarter after many quarterly declines. SKT attributed the improvement to a jump in data usage following its 5G launch in April.

Monthly data usage of 5G users increased 65 per cent to 33.7GB compared with LTE consumption, which he believes has the potential to increase ARPU.

Yu noted Wi-Fi usage had dropped, citing this as a factor in the increased mobile data consumption.

The operator plans to commercialise the 28MHz band in 2020 to increase data speeds to 7.2Gb/s from 2.7Gb/s using the 3.5GHz band.

SKT revealed it reached the 1 million 5G subscriber milestone in August.