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| Hong Jin-bae, director at the Ministry of Science and ICT, announced the results of the 2020 5G telecom service quality evaluation at the Seoul Government Complex, Wednesday. / Yonhap |
By Kim Hyun-bin
SK Telecom, the country's top telecom carrier, offers the fastest fifth-generation (5G) service in Korea, while runner-up KT has the country's most stable 5G service and LG Uplus has the widest 5G network coverage in the nation, the government said Wednesday.
The science ministry released its first 5G quality evaluation, and three major telecom companies failed to reach connection speeds of 700 megabytes per second (Mbps), falling far short of the promised quality of 5G connectivity.
The carriers commercialized 5G here in April 2019 and advertised that 5G is 20 times faster than the 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network, and in theory able to produce 20 gigabytes per second (Gbps).
According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, which evaluated in Seoul and six metropolitan cities in Korea, the average 5G download speed among the three telecom companies came out to 656.56 Mbps, while the average upload speed was found to be 64.16 Mbps.
In a quality evaluation of LTE last year, the average download speed was 158.53 Mbps, and the average upload speed just 42.83 Mbps. When comparing the 5G and LTE networks, 5G was only faster by 4.1 times in downloads and 1.5 in uploads, which is way short of the advertised speed.
The ministry also conducted another study using citizens' 5G smartphones, through which the average speed came out lower than the government's official results.
The average consumer download speed was found to be 622.67 Mbps and the average upload speed was 48.25 Mbps.
When looking at the average download rate by location, at a subway station it was 885.26 Mbps and on the subway 703.37 Mbps, with the KTX at 272.75 Mbps and the SRT 368.35 Mbps, showing varying speeds even on the train transportation system.
The rate of 5G devices switching over to LTE due to high traffic within the subway came out to 19.49 percent.
The government evaluation shows that 5G coverage is not 100 percent fully established within the capital.
The three telecom companies' average coverage in Seoul came out to 425.53 square kilometers.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport states that Seoul's total area is 605.2 square kilometers, so the telecom companies only cover around 70 percent of the capital region.
Only 67.93 percent of multi-purpose facilities including department stores, passenger terminals and large hospitals provided 5G signals in the capital.
Many customers have been criticizing the telecom companies for failing to provide 5G connectivity when customers are paying more than 20 percent more for 5G subscription plans than they would for LTE.
The 5G coverage and lack of connectivity has become cause for major dissatisfaction among smartphone users.
According to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) there have been 280 dispute mediation cases since June last year. Among them 56 cases, or 20 percent, were about 5G quality.
Many experts claim the lack of 5G connection and low quality of service will continue through 2022 as there is a lack of 5G base stations around the country. They added that the telecom companies are facing these issues as they were ill-prepared, rushing into launching 5G as they were too focused on taking the title as the world's first to commercialize 5G.
