LG Uplus said on Wednesday it recorded 3.4 trillion won in sales and 275 billion won in operating income during the first quarter of 2021.
It is the telco’s best quarterly earnings to date, it said. Operating income increased by 25.4% from the year prior, while sales increased by 4% over that same time period.
Like its compatriots, SK Telecom and KT, LG Uplus credited the strong performance of its remote services business unit for the growth.
The telco said its smart home business unit, which provides IPTV and ultra-fast home internet services, was also a big contributor to the jump in earnings. Sales from IPTV increased 7% from a year prior while sales from home internet increased 11.2%, LG Uplus said.
Its enterprise business unit, which provides data centre and internet services for companies, also saw sales increase by 9% from a year prior, the telco said.
LG Uplus also stressed that its 5G subscriber base increased by 129.2% when compared to the same time period in 2020. The telco added it has 3.33 million 5G subscribers as of the end of the first quarter of 2021.
Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics said on the same day that one of its researchers was named as chair for one of the working groups at 3GPP, the global standard setting body for telecommunications.
Samsung technical vice president Younsun Kim will become chairman of Radio Access Network Working Group 1, which sets standards on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing multiple input multiple output based on LTE and 5G communications.
The group, which has around 600 researchers as members, is currently working on standards to widen 5G coverage, lessen power consumption of 5G handsets, and develop new 5G services, and Kim is expected to play a major role in shaping that work, Samsung said.
