South Korea launched the world's first commercial 5G service in April 2019, triggering a rapid wave of deployments across the globe. By the mid-2020s more than 300 operators in over 90 countries had launched commercial 5G services. China leads in total subscriber count with over 900 million 5G connections, driven by aggressive nationwide rollouts from China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom across sub-6 GHz bands n78 and n79. The United States and South Korea lead in millimeter-wave deployments, targeting dense urban hotspots and venues with extreme capacity.