In April 2019, South Korea's telecom operator announced that it was the first country in the world to commercialize 5G, and it took advantage of the time difference to beat U.S. operators by several hours, which made U.S. operators angry. Now, South Korean media have reported that South Korea is using fake 5G this year.
What's going on here? The Korea Herald quoted industry sources as saying that the commercial 5G speed in South Korea is only 3-4 times that of 4G LTE. The 4G and 3.5GHz 5G network is not the real 5G, but the real 5G refers to the 28GHz millimeter wave band, which can reach 20 times the speed of 4G LTE network.
Samsung's flagship Galaxy S20, for example, boasts 5G support, but the S20 phones sold in South Korea don't support the 28GHz millimeter wave spectrum.
According to the plan of The South Korean operator, the commercial use of 5G of 28GHz MMW frequency band could be done by the end of this year at the soon. Due to the epidemic and other reasons, this schedule is later than the originally planned commercial use in the second half of the year.
By the end of April, there were 6.34 million 5G users in South Korea, according to data released by the South Korean government.
