Koreans are unhappy with 5G performance and are switching back to 4G, reports the Nikkei.

“As many as 562,656 people have switched from 5G to LTE,” says a member of Korea’s National Assembly, Hong Jung-min, who sits on the country’s Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee.

That represents about 6.5% of total 5G subscribers at SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus – the three Korean networks.

“Changing a contract requires troublesome procedures, but nevertheless, consumers cancel 5G contracts because they are disgusted with poor quality, inadequate coverage and high fee structures,” says Hong, “telecom operators should make efforts to improve the quality and customer satisfaction of their 5G services.”

A survey by the Ministry of Science and ICT, found that the average 5G download speed of the three carriers was only about four times faster than that of LTE when the networks had promised 20x faster downloads – at 20Gbps.

To transmit data at a speed of 20Gbps requires a frequency of 28Ghz.

However the three networks have only adopted the 3.5-5Ghz band that requires fewer base stations. The maximum speed for this frequency is only 1.9Gbps.

There have also been complaints that 5G is slow to connect to and drains batteries quickly.