South Korean, US telcos roll out 5G services early as race heats up

South Korea’s three mobile carriers and top US telco Verizon Communications commercially launched 5G services on Wednesday, ahead of their initial schedules, as they rushed for the first spot in the race to roll out the latest wireless technology.

SK Telecom and two smaller carriers had planned to initially launch 5G in South Korea on Friday with Samsung Electronics’ new 5G-enabled smartphone Galaxy S10.

Verizon was due to roll out the technology in Chicago and Minneapolis on April 11 and said last month customers could use 5G on Motorola’s Z3 and a “Moto Mod”, a physical magnet-like attachment for the phone.

Countries including South Korea, the United States, China and Japan are racing to market 5G, hoping the technology will spur breakthrough in fields such as smart cities and autonomous cars.

The technology can offer 20-times faster data speeds than 4G long-term evolution (LTE) networks and better support for artificial intelligence and virtual reality with low latency.

Sometimes it can offer 100-times faster speeds.