SK telecom to offer LTE plans for 5G devices

[Photo by Yonhap]

South Korea’s leading mobile carrier SK telecom Co. will allow owners of fifth-generation (5G) devices to subscribe to its long-term evolution (LTE) plans from Thursday.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced Wednesday that SK telecom has filed a revision to its terms and conditions to allow 5G terminal users to subscribe to LTE plans and LTE terminal users to 5G plans.

SK Telecom customers, both existing and new, will be able to subscribe to 5G or LTE plans regardless of the type of their devices from Thursday.

For example, 5G low-volume users had to use the lowest 5G plan with a rate of 49,000 won ($37.61) or higher for 8 gigabytes (GB), but they can now change to the 43,000 won LTE plan that offers 2.5GB per month.

Subscribers with LTE devices can also sign up for 5G plans.

Currently, SK telecom’s LTE plans mainly consist of those that offer large data of more than 100GB per month and those that provide less than 10GB, so customers who use between 10GB and 100GB per month had to use a 100GB plan that cost 69,000 won per month.

LTE customers who use 50GB of data per month will be able to save 5,000 won by switching to a 5G plan that offers 54GB for 64,000 won per month.

LTE subscribers aged between 19 and 34 can switch to a 5G plan and sign up for the “Zero Youth Plan” that provides up to 50GB of additional data.

The Science Ministry plans to finalize discussions with other telecommunications providers, including KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp., so that they can also implement these measures as soon as possible.