The company achieved its LTE subscriber mark in one year and five months, after launching Korea’s first LTE service in July 2011.
In comparison, the company says it took two years and four months to achieve the same amount of subscribers on 3G WCDMA since commercialising the service in May 2006.
SK Telecom’s LTE subscribers take up 26% of its total mobile subscriber base, expanding 11-fold at the end of November 2011 when it reported 630,000 LTE subscribers, accounting for only 2.4% of the total.
“SK Telecom smoothly achieved the year-end target of 7 million LTE subscribers backed by unmatched network quality, LTE specialised services and a rich lineup of LTE devices,” said Jang Dong-hyun, EVP and head of marketing at SK Telecom.
“As LTE is expecting to become the mainstream service in 2013, we will focus on developing and offering differentiated LTE services to deliver greater value and convenience for our customers.”
LTE subscriber base has grown substantially since July 2012, when the company completed nationwide LTE deployment covering 99% of the nation’s population. Demand for LTE has also been buoyed by the launch of the Apple iPhone 5, which has added a daily average of 60,000 customers.
SK Telecom expects to secure over 7.4 million LTE subscribers by the end of 2012.
In separate news, the company has announced that its president and CEO, Ha Sung-min, has been re-elected as a GSMA board member.