Improving Public Wi-Fi Quality... Replacing 18,000 Outdated Devices and Expanding Coverage

[Asia Economy Reporter Seolgina Jo] The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on the 26th that, as part of the Digital New Deal policy, it will advance the quality of aging public Wi-Fi installed in public places such as community centers, libraries, and welfare centers by the end of this year.

The Ministry of Science and ICT established and opened public Wi-Fi at 10,969 locations nationwide from 2012 to 2017 to reduce household communication costs and strengthen communication accessibility for local residents. However, for the 18,000 APs installed before 2014, quality issues such as speed degradation, connection delays, and failures have continuously occurred as the equipment's service life (6 years) was exceeded.

Accordingly, on the 24th, the Ministry of Science and ICT signed an agreement with the three major mobile carriers and the National Information Society Agency to promote the project, and will proceed with replacing the existing aging equipment with the latest Wi-Fi 6. It is expected that quality issues such as ▲traffic speed and ▲connection delays, which significantly deteriorated when multiple users connected, will be resolved, leading to a noticeable improvement in perceived speed.

Along with this, additional APs will be installed in places where coverage gaps occur due to a shortage of APs in already established public places such as bus terminals and libraries, thereby expanding the service reception area (coverage).

Heo Seong-wook, Director of Information Security and Network Policy at the Ministry of Science and ICT, stated, “Public Wi-Fi has become a means for citizens to use data for free, such as for information searches, and with the acceleration of the Digital New Deal era, the demand and usage of public Wi-Fi are expected to increase exponentially,” adding, “We will steadily promote the establishment of 41,000 new public places by 2022 and the advancement of aging public Wi-Fi quality to create an environment where data can be freely used anywhere nationwide.”