KT, the nation’s second-largest telecom operator, ranked No.1 in the Long Term Evolution speed race in Korea, data showed on Thursday.

With a download speed of 21.3 megabits per second, KT was in sixth place among 40 telecom operators worldwide and first among Korean mobile carriers, according to a report released by the British wireless network research company OpenSignal.

OpenSignal surveyed 6 million users of 40 telecom operators in 16 countries to publish the global 2014 LTE quality report. For the evaluation, KT and SK Telecom were selected as the nation’s telecom operators.

“The report shows that KT’s LTE technology is globally recognized with a faster speed and wider coverage than its rivals,” KT’s Network Division head Oh Sung-mok said.

The report also showed that Korea’s Time on LTE coverage is 91 percent, which is the highest quality in the world. The nation’s average download speed of LTE is 18.6 mbps, which came eighth in global rankings.

The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said the broadband LTE technology is 1.8 times faster than conventional LTE in its 2013 telecommunications quality service report last December. It said the broadband LTE is even faster than carrier aggregation technology.

KT has won global awards for its broadband LTE technologies over the past few years. The company received the Outstanding LTE Contribution award for its broadband LTE-Advanced technology, and the Outstanding Overall Mobile Technology from the CTO’s choice at the Mobile World Congress 2014, which opened this week in Barcelona.

By Shin Ji-hye (shinjh@heraldcorp.com)