South Korean market leader SK Telecom has announced that it has passed the five million connections mark for LTE subscribers, making it only the third operator to do so after Verizon Wireless in the US and Japan’s NTT Docomo.

The operator reached the milestone 46 days after hitting four million subscribers and a year after it launched its first LTE smartphone. Around 33,000 LTE users per day signed up to use the LTE service during August.

The total amount of data used by SK’s LTE users now stands at 33.5 petabytes, of which 46 percent was for multimedia content.

The company increased its year-end target for LTE subscribers in April, from 5 million to 7 million, meaning it has now achieved 71 percent of its year-end LTE subscriber target. Executive VP and head of marketing for SK Telecom Jang Dong-hyun said the company is confident it can reach 7 million subscribers by the end of the year.

With the addition of new services that can take advantage of the LTE network – such as personalised mobile shopping, real-time sports broadcasting and a disaster alert system – the operator hopes to reach 14 million LTE subscribers by the end of 2013 and 18 million by the end of 2014.

“Going forward, SK Telecom will focus on offering unrivalled LTE service and differentiated customer benefits rather than concentrating its efforts in bringing new subscribers,” Dong-hyun added.

Japanese number one operator NTT Docomo recently announced that it had hit 5 million subscribers for its ‘Xi’ LTE service, gaining one million subscribers in less than a month.