SK Telecom famous its 5G subscribers accounted for 77% of the telco’s general handset subscribers within the second quarter of the 12 months
In sum – what to know:
5G subscribers reached 17M regardless of breach – SK Telecom noticed a 4.9% y-o-y improve in 5G customers, even after dropping 220,000 subscribers because of a current cybersecurity incident.
AI income climbs, internet revenue plunges – Whereas whole AI enterprise grew 13.9% y-o-y, SK Telecom’s internet revenue dropped 76.2% in Q2 amid rising capex and falling general income.
AI infra push continues with AWS – A brand new AWS-backed AI information middle in Ulsan is about to go reside in 2027, aiming to push SKT’s information middle capability past 300 MW.
SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest telecom operator, ended the second quarter of the 12 months with a complete of 17 million subscribers within the 5G phase, up 4.9% from 16.2 million in the identical interval the earlier 12 months, the provider stated in its earnings assertion.
In the course of the second quarter of the 12 months, the Korean operator misplaced practically 220.000 5G subscribers because of a current cybersecurity incident that affected the telco’s operations.
On the finish of June, SK Telecom’s 5G subscribers accounted for 77% of its general handset subscribers, up from 71% on the finish of Q2 2024.
The variety of LTE subscriber reached 5.08 million on the finish of the second quarter, down 23% year-on-year. The Korean provider ended Q2 with a complete of 33.4 million cell subscribers, down 2.3% year-on-year.
SK Telecom reported its working revenue decline 37.1% year-on-year to KRW338 billion ($244 million) in Q2, with revenues down 1.9% to KRW4.34 trillion.
Web revenue for the interval decreased by 76.2% to KRW83 billion, whereas the telco’s capex in Q2 reached KRW635 billion, up 63.6% year-on-year.
SK Telecom’s synthetic intelligence (AI) enterprise grew 13.9% year-over-year in Q2. The AI information middle (AIDC) enterprise posted income of KRW 108.7 billion, up 13.3% from the identical interval final 12 months, pushed by improved utilization, the telco stated. The AI Transformation (AIX) enterprise grew 15.3% to KRW 46.8 billion in income, bolstered by increasing B2B options gross sales.
“In June, SK Telecom introduced a joint plan with Amazon Internet Providers (AWS) and SK Group associates to construct a knowledge middle in Ulsan, South Korea for a brand new AWS AI Zone. The Ulsan AIDC, set to start operations in 2027, will leverage SK Teams’ capabilities and function a key hub within the ‘AI Infrastructure Superhighway,’ SK Telecom’s plan for establishing AI infrastructure to grow to be an AI hub in Asia Pacific area,” the telco stated.
As soon as in operation, the Ulsan AIDC, at the side of the Guro DC in Seoul, will deliver SK Telecom’s whole information middle capability to over 300 MW. SK Telecom expects to realize an annual income of greater than KRW 1 trillion from AIDC enterprise by 2030.
SK Telecom has lately launched a sovereign GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) platform constructed on greater than 1,000 Nvidia B200 GPUs — one of many largest clusters in South Korea.
This new GPUaaS infrastructure, branded ‘Haein’, provides top-tier computing efficiency and is a successor to the corporate’s earlier H100-based providing launched in late 2024.
The system has been chosen by Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT to assist its “Proprietary AI Basis Mannequin” program, which goals to develop globally aggressive nationwide AI fashions and foster the home AI ecosystem.
The Asian telco famous that the infrastructure will likely be housed in SK Telecom’s Gasan AI information middle (AIDC). The deployment consists of partnerships with Penguin Options and Supermicro for system integration and AI server procurement, it added.
By using its in-house virtualization answer, ‘Petasus AI Cloud,’ SK Telecom stated it will probably immediately partition and reconfigure the GPU cluster in accordance with buyer wants, maximizing utilization. As well as, the corporate gives the ‘AI Cloud Supervisor,’ an AIOps (AI for IT Operations) platform that effectively manages your entire AI service lifecycle — from growth and coaching to deployment. This platform, backed by intensive experience in large-scale mannequin growth, enhances consumer work effectivity and growth comfort, in accordance with the Asian provider.
