South Korea Gets 5G

[acurrie]

It looks like South Korea is the first country to see a wide release of 5G. According to Reuters, the services went live at 23:00 local time yesterday:

On Wednesday, SK Telecom showed off K-pop stars and an Olympic gold medalist as its first 5G customers.

Smaller rival KT Corp said it will offer cheaper 5G plans than its LTE service, with unlimited data and four-year installments to buy 5G devices.

Samsung was the first to unwrap a 5G phone in February when it unveiled the Galaxy S10 5G, putting the world’s top smartphone maker by volume in pole position in the 5G race, some analysts say.

LG Electronics Inc plans to release its 5G smartphone in South Korea later this month.

So how fast is it? Someone on reddit reports that in the city of Busan you can get 5G broadband Internet with speeds of up to 10 Gbps for the equivalent of $88 USD per month.

As for security concerns, only one South Korean carrier, LG's Uplus, uses Huawei equipment; the country's largest, SK Telecom, claims to have additional measures in place that keeps its network from being hacked.

I might have to schedule a trip over there soon—for research only, of course.

Source: Reuters via reddit