South Korea’s KT vowed yesterday to be the leader in the 5G era, with its CEO claiming the operator is at the forefront of initiatives to commercialise the technology, which still lacks global standards.

KT chairman and CEO Chang-Gyu Hwang (pictured) said South Korea has the world’s most advanced telecoms infrastructure and is now leading the global standardisation of 5G, the Korea Herald reported.

He was speaking at an event to celebrate the 130th anniversary of the country’s telecoms market.

This is not his first bold claim about 5G. At Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona in early March he said visitors to the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea will have access to commercial 5G services.

Hwang said it was moving ahead rapidly with 5G, noting that speed is only one part of the requirement, but the biggest reason is capacity. “We need to build a network that will be able to deliver real-time data with very low latency,” he said at MWC.

The migration to 5G networks is forecast to create about KRW552 trillion ($467 billion) from equipment manufacturing and services from 2020 to 2026, when 5G service is expected to go mainstream, according to the ICT Ministry.

Almost 70 per cent of the country’s mobile users have 4G plans. Smartphone penetration now exceeds 80 per cent.

KT, the country’s second largest mobile operator, signed an agreement in May with Alcatel-Lucent to jointly develop and test radio access technologies that could eventually be the foundation for 5G networks.

Operators and vendors across the region have announced a raft of 5G partnerships since Q4 last year. They are attempting to drive development of 5G technology, which isn’t actually likely to be officially ratified as a standard until 2016 at the very earliest.

Rival SK Telecom agreed in January to conduct joint research with Nokia Networks to develop core 5G network technologies, such as gigabit-level data communications and cloud-based virtualised base station technology.