A consumer looks at a 5G phone at a mobile store in downtown Seoul on June 8, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, March 15 (Korea Bizwire) — 5G smartphone users have long surpassed 4G LTE users in terms of data usage with higher demand for improved service quality, data showed Monday.
The Ministry of Science and ICT reported that 5G traffic in January reached 544,974 terabytes (TB), up by 9,915 TB (1.9 percent) from the previous month (535,059 TB).
This was twice as high as the total amount of 4G LTE traffic in the same month (274,774 TB).
Each 5G smartphone user accounted for 26,493 megabytes (MB) of traffic, which was three times more than an individual 4G LTE smartphone user.
Smartphone traffic in South Korea exceeded the 800,000-TB hurdle in October of last year, growing from 600,000 TB in 2020.
This January, traffic reached 819,794 TB.
Despite the increasing traffic, however, Rep. Kim Yeung-shik of the People Power Party reported that mobile carriers have set up 190,000 5G base stations throughout the country, which is only one-fifth of the number of 4G LTE base stations.
The fact that 5G plans are still too costly has been raising frustration among customers.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
