Vice Chairman Kwon Young-soo of LG U+ expressed his determination to break out of third place by leveraging 5G, which is scheduled for commercialization next year. Meeting with reporters at MWC 2018 held in Barcelona, Spain on the 27th (local time), he said, "We are preparing with the goal of achieving the world's first 5G commercialization, and equipment and terminal companies are ready. It appears that commercialization will be possible at the timeframe we anticipated." He emphasized, "The environment is changing due to 5G. This is an opportunity to break out of third place. We will make full preparations so as not to miss this chance."

However, he noted that there are difficulties in generating revenue from 5G. He stated, "There is no conspicuous revenue generation model. When I talk with executives from various telecom companies, they all say in unison that making money from 5G won't be easy." He added, "5G services are divided into B2B and B2C. B2B such as autonomous vehicles has various business models, but the scale is not large and it takes time." B2C is also currently dependent on AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality), and gaming. At the current pace, he assessed that customer needs cannot be met by next year's commercialization.

"We are in a position where we must inevitably discover services because we invest first," he said, adding, "International telecom companies are not competitors in the effort to discover B2C use cases." LG U+ plans to cooperate with global telecom operators including Verizon in the United States, China Mobile in China, and KDDI.

Regarding areas that need to be prepared in the 5G commercialization process aside from business models, he explained, "There are many technical challenges in 5G that we did not have to address in 4G, such as securing dual connectors and accumulating expertise in 28GHz frequency. Because it is a difficult frequency band, cell design requires significant time and effort. There can be considerable gaps between companies with good technological capabilities and those without."

Regarding 5G equipment, Samsung Electronics and Chinese Huawei are competing. He revealed that domestic mobile carriers are also reviewing equipment adoption from both companies. To this, he responded, "Samsung Electronics has concentrated on developing the 28GHz band while Huawei has focused on the 3.5GHz band. It is still too early to assess who is better."

Vice Chairman Kwon stated, "We will enhance 5G's standing by providing differentiated content services without competitors," emphasizing, "We will establish ourselves as a clear leader in the home media business with three weapons: AI speakers, IPTV, and home IoT."