LG Uplus said it added 980,000 5G subscribers during 2023
Korean operator LG Uplus ended the fourth quarter of 2023 with 7.04 million 5G subscribers, up 16.2% year-on-year, according to the company’s latest earnings statement.
The telco added a total of 980,000 5G subscribers during 2023, while total net additions in the fourth quarter reached 221,000.
The Korean company also noted that 5G subscribers accounted for 64.3% of the telco’s overall mobile base at the end of 2023, up from 54.1% at the end of 2022.
The telco’s mobile user base grew 17.2% year-on-year to 18.8 million. MVNO users jumped 63% to 6.43 million, while IoT connections surged 80% year-on-year to 10.3 million.
Net profit in the fourth quarter of 2023 totaled 105.2 billion won ($79.2 million), down 34% compared with a net profit of 159.4 billion won in Q4 2022. For full 2023, the carrier’s net profits amounted to 630.2 billion won, down 4.9% year-on-year.
LG Uplus’ Q4 revenues amounted to 3.82 trillion won, up 5.8% compared to the same period in 2022, while annual revenues totaled 14.37 trillion won, up 3.4% year-on-year.
Meanwhile, the telco’s operating profit decline by 31.8% year-on-year to 195.5 billion won in the fourth quarter. For full 2023, operating profit reached 998 billion won, down 7.7% year-on-year.
LG Uplus also said that sales from its wireless division reached 1.58 trillion won in the fourth quarter, up 0.6% year-on-year.
Last year, the government of South Korea effectively cancelled the spectrum licenses in the 28 GHz band that had been previously allocated to local operators for 5G deployments, due to the lack of investment and missed rollout requirements.
Through the decision local operators LG Uplus, SK Telecom and KT Corp. lost the right to use the 28 GHz frequencies they had won in a spectrum auction in 2018.
The Ministry of Science and ICT noted that the decision was made because local carriers failed to deploy the 28 GHz radio stations that were required as part of the licensing.
The three operators had secured frequencies in the 3.5 GHz and 28 GHz bands in 2018, under the condition that they each deploy 22,500 and 15,000 radio stations for each spectrum band.
The government noted that telcos had fulfilled with the stipulated number of radio stations for the 3.5GHz spectrum but all failed to reach the deployment goal for the 28GHz frequencies.
