LG Uplus CEO Lee Sang-chul said Thursday that the company will set the global standard for the fourth-generation Long Term Evolution service, adding that the competition has just started.

His ambitious comment came after the distant third-place market player recently secured more than 1.6 million LTE subscribers, the highest growth rate among the nation’s three telecom carriers in the first quarter of this year, the company said. 

“We have completed the world’s first nationwide LTE network on our own. It is unprecedented that a telecom company has built up some 65,000 remote radio heads in just nine months,” Lee said in a meeting with executive officials at the company’s headquarters in downtown Seoul.

“High-end customers are coming back, while service cancellation remains at the lowest level since 2009. All indicate that customers have started to rebrand LG Uplus when it comes to LTE,” he said.

He pledged to continue efforts to lead the local LTE market in the second quarter of this year, including the commercialization of voice calls on the LTE network, which, if successful, could be another world first.

LG Uplus, together with SK Telecom, started the LTE service in July. With the number of SKT’s LTE users exceeding 1.8 million, LG is fast catching up with the market leader, while widening the gap with No. 2 KT with some 400,000 subscribers.

By Lee Ji- yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)