Early tests of 5G performance in South Korea found third-ranked LG Uplus held an edge over its rivals, with a peak download rate of 903Mb/s, research by RootMetrics showed.

The operator also had a significant lead in median download speeds at 426Mb/s, compared with 287Mb/s at SK Telecom (SKT) and 163Mb/s at KT.

KT’s maximum download speed was 751Mb/s, while SKT’s was 639Mb/s.

The research company said LG Uplus’ 5G speeds combined with its reliability and low latency gave it an edge over the competition in the early phases of 5G deployments.

Its 5G median download latency of 72 milliseconds also was the lowest among all networks, with KT at 107ms and SKT at 195ms.

Tests were carried out from 28 June to 6 July at peak hours in downtown Seoul, during test drives in suburban areas of the city, and on the Seoul to Busan train line using the LG V50 ThinQ 5G smartphone.

The operators, which launched the new service in early April, signed up more than 2 million 5G customers by early August, Korean media reported.

With their network deployments still in the early stages, the testers were unable to connect to 5G more than half the time, with the technology available for 42.2 per cent of the RootMetrics download tests. KT led in download availability at 45.6 per cent, compared with 44.6 per cent at LG Uplus and 42.2 per cent at SKT.