South Korea’s mobile network operators — SK Telecom, KT Corp., and LG Uplus — proved once again that they are leading the advancement of 5G on multiple fronts. The trio of carriers reported earnings this week and shared some details about their 5G deployments, including adoption rates and new services coming to the fore.

SK Telecom, the country’s largest operator by subscriber count, said it ended 2019 with just over 2 million 5G subscribers. That represents a 35.6% jump in 5G subscribers from the previous quarter, according to the company. It expects to reach at least 6 million 5G subscribers by the end of this year.

The operator also noted that quarterly revenue was up 3.2% year-over-year and 1.6% from the previous quarter due to greater data usage and 5G subscriber growth. SK Telecom’s marketing spend also increased 5.5% year-over-year in a bid to acquire those 5G subscribers.

Income from its mobile network operations was down 7.6% for the year, however, due to increased 5G investments. SK Telecom said it has launched a series of new 5G services, including social and virtual reality gaming, mixed reality broadcasting, and “5G clusters” to provide enterprises with higher performance network capabilities and services.

The operator also said work is underway with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deploy 5G mobile edge computing (MEC) capabilities, including low-latency services for specialized use cases. SK Telecom is among a group of operator partners that the cloud giant announced in December for its Wavelength offering, which embeds AWS compute and storage at the edge of mobile networks. SK Telecom plans to deploy Wavelength service this year.

During the last month, SK Telecom also launched a new task force targeted at sharing what it has learned in 5G and MEC across the Asia-Pacific region and it successfully initiated a standalone 5G data session using equipment from multiple vendors on a commercial network.

South Korea’s second-largest operator by subscriber count, KT Corp., reported that it closed 2019 with 1.42 million 5G subscribers, achieving its goal of having 10% of its total subscriber base on its new network. The operator said its wireless service revenue has also been on the upswing as a result of its growing 5G subscriber base.

KT’s 5G network has expanded to 85 cities and it plans to expand coverage in buildings, public places, and large facilities throughout 2020.

During the earnings call, CFO Kyung-Keun Yoon said there are many uncertainties related to the outlook for its 5G business, including device availability, and opportunities with enterprises. “We plan to expand the B2B experience to other industrial sectors and are making tangible inroads in that business, including our 5G collaboration robot and smart factory,” Kyung-Keun said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.

“We have been working with various partners to identify applicable use cases for 5G B2B, and as of the fourth quarter of 2019 we have already identified 150 use cases,” he said. “Since launching the dedicated 5G B2B service as of April 2019, on a year-end basis of December, we have already secured 53 customers.”

The carrier is also conducting field testing on the millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum it holds in the 28 GHz band, but it hasn’t earmarked capex for 5G deployments on that spectrum yet, according to Kyung-Keun. KT expects to grow its 5G subscriber base by at least 25% by the end of 2020.

LG U+ reported that it closed 2019 with 1.16 million 5G subscribers. The operator’s 5G subscriber base jumped 33.1% during the fourth quarter of 2019, and 5G subscribers now comprise 8% of its total subscriber base or 11% of all handset-based customers.