The initial investment had been set at KRW 2.7 trillion, but has now been expanded to KRW 4 trillion. The additional investment will be used to deploy 5G infrastructure in subways, railroads, department stores and universities.
South Korea ended January with 92,000 5G base stations installed nationwide. "For every one LTE base station, there needs to be around four 5G base stations for there to be similar coverage. Coverage also depends on the environment and location", said an unnamed representative of one of the three mobile operators.
Back in January, SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus have teamed up to provide 5G services on subways in major cities. The three operators completed the deployment of 5G infrastructure on the subway system in Gwangju, 330 kilometers southwest of Seoul. The operators plan to install 5G networks for subways and metro stations in major cities, including Daegu, Daejeon and Busan, in the first quarter of this year.
South Korea ended 2019 with 5 million 5G subscribers. SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus commercially launched fully-fledged 5G mobile networks on 3 April 2019. In August last year, SK Telecom led South Korea’s 5G market with 84 million subscribers, followed by KT with 630,000 and LG Uplus with 540,000. KT passed 1 million 5G customers on 21 September 2019, less than six months since launching the service.
