LG Uplus, one of the nation’s top three telecom operators, said Sunday the opening of its new office in Yongsan, Seoul, from Monday marks the beginning of a new era.

Its CEO and vice chairman Lee Sang-chul plans to announce the company’s new leap during an official opening ceremony planned for April 29.

The new 21-story building is located on a 55,000-square-meter site near Yongsan Station. The first three floors are dedicated solely to recreational and welfare facilities such as a day care center and a library.

One of the building’s key features is a double-decker elevator ― the first of its kind here. The elevator has two cars stacked one on top of the other to increase the passenger capacity of each elevator shaft and reduce energy consumption, the company said. 

The toothed-wheel glass exterior is also designed to improve the building’s fuel efficiency by controlling heat insulation.

LG Uplus was established in 2010 by merging three LG-affiliated companies: LG Telecom, LG Dacom and LG Powercom. The company had rented a building near Seoul Station until now.

“With the relocation to a new head office building, the company will leap into a global No. 1 in the fields of the next fifth-generation mobile network and Internet of Things technology,” said a company official.

The company launched the world’s first Long Term Evolution mobile network service in 2012. It was also the first to commercialize the Voice-over-LTE wireless calling service.

The company aims to start the ultrafast fifth-generation network service by 2020, sooner than its rivals.

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