South Korea’s 5G users near 11 million in November, says report

South Korea racked up nearly 11 million users on fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks as of end-November, data showed on Thursday.

According to a data compiled by the Ministry of Science and ICT, the country had 10.9 million 5G users last month, accounting for 15.5 per cent of the total 70.5 million mobile subscriptions, reports Yonhap news agency.

Subscriptions to the high-speed networks jumped by nearly 1 million from the previous month amid launches of new 5G phones, such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone 12 series, the tech giant’s first smartphones to support the high-speed networks.

South Korea was to first country to commercialise 5G in April last year and has since been aggressively pushing for wider adoption of the networks, which in theory can reach 20 times faster speeds than 4G LTE.