At the train depot, Airport Railroad staff are inspecting train cars and facilities using laptops connected to the private 5G network

• Establishing private 5G at Airport Railroad's headquarters and vehicle base... Interlocking with train equipment within the year
• Leading the transition to 5G-R system by enhancing security such as applying PQC to private 5G network for the first time in Korea
• Discussing practical utilization of private 5G network through company-wide workshops

LG U+ (www.lguplus.com) announced on the 15th that it has commercialized private 5G for the first time among domestic railway operators at the Airport Railroad, laying the foundation for digital transformation (DX) of the railway industry and accelerating the transition to the 5G-R era, the next-generation railway communication system.

With this project, Airport Railroad is the first Korean railway organization to put a private 5G network into practice.

The Airport Railroad is a core transportation system in the Seoul metropolitan area, with 286,281 passengers per day (as of the first half of '25), and exceeded 1.1 billion cumulative passengers in May.

Earlier, LG U+ installed private 5G equipment at the Airport Railroad's Gumam Office Building and Yongyu Vehicle Base and completed the completion inspection.

Within the year, the two companies will renovate and apply the on-board equipment that transmits and receives train operation information in real time based on private 5G.

In addition, to operate the communication network safely from cyberattacks such as hacking, the company applied Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) based USIM for the first time in Korea to further enhance security.

Until now, Airport Railroad has been utilizing LTE-R wireless networks for railroad operations, but by introducing a private 5G network that is advantageous for large data transmission such as video and IoT-based facility management, it has laid the foundation for DX utilizing a fast and secure communication network.

The deployment of the private 5G network is not just a simple introduction of communication infrastructure, but the first step in advancing the digital capabilities of the entire railroad industry.

Airport Railroad will collect important data such as fault information and component status generated during train operation and use it for maintenance, and will transform the work environment into a wireless-centered corporate culture.

“The construction of the private 5G network for the Airport Railroad is an integrated project in which LG U+ participated in the entire process from design to equipment application,” said Park Sung-yul, Executive Vice President of the Corporate Business Innovation Group at LG U+. “We will work with the Airport Railroad to provide differentiated customer value, including the transition to the 5G-R system in the future.”