SK Telecom Co., South Korea’s leading mobile carrier, said Monday that its daily data transfer topped 1 petabyte in line with the growing use of smartphones and tablet computers in the country.

According to SK Telecom, data transfer on its mobile network topped the milestone on April 26, becoming the country’s first mobile operator to set such a record. A petabyte is a measure of data, and one petabyte is a million gigabytes.

The figure includes data traffic on the third-generation network, WiFi and the long-term evolution services offered by SK Telecom.

SK Telecom saw LTE subscriptions hit the 7 million mark 17 months after the launch of its faster mobile network in July 2011.

Its LTE subscribers accounted for 37 percent of some 27 million mobile phone subscriptions as of April, a huge jump from a 2.4 percent share in 2011. The company said it expects its LTE subscriptions to reach 15 million this year.

Earlier data showed that South Korea’s wireless data traffic almost doubled in January from a year earlier, which is in line with the explosive growth of smartphone users in the country.

Wireless data traffic totaled 58,262 terabytes in January, compared with 29,748 terabytes a year earlier, according to the data compiled by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

One terabyte equals 1,024 gigabytes.

The sharp increase in wireless data traffic was boosted by a surge in the number of smartphone users who opted to connect their smartphones to the faster mobile network, LTE.

The country’s LTE subscriber base topped the 20-million mark last month in just 20 months after the service was introduced in the country. The country’s smartphone population topped the 30-million mark in August last year. (Yonhap News)